A Glance Back, A Long Look Forward
April 19, 2012 by matt · Leave a Comment
I’m sure this has never happened to you, but today I got distracted at work…
I blame the internet (read: Twitter) for being so interesting. But at least it was a semi-productive kind of distracted; I started reading back through some of the very first posts on this blog, written by Jeremy way back in the day.
This was back when we still emphasized our Buy Shoes. Save Lives. program, and Jeremy ended a few of the emails with quirky phrases like “shod thyself” and signed off with some pretty epic monikers like “the rad-ifier” (someone who makes things rad, obviously) and “the wristbandits,” just to name a couple.
But all this rabbit-trailing was a great reminder of PLC’s history and what you have made possible! Some of you have faithfully read this blog for years. You’ve been with us through serious tragedy, and sky-high elation. You stuck with us when we failed (and wrote about it in-detail) and when we transitioned to our current Remedy Mission model.
You rooted us on back when this was all just a big, beautiful mess-of-an-idea. You believed in us, and I hope you know how grateful we are for it.
PLC turned 4 years-old last February, and that quick look back at our history reminded me how much further we have to go. By the end of the year we’ll be developing heart centers in 5 cities across the country—great news, right!? But the key word there is ‘developing,’ because these centers will likely take 5-8 years before they’re fully independent and self-sustaining.
So we need you to stick with us, to keep reading, and to remember that this won’t happen without you. Countless thousands of children are still waiting, and countless thousands will be saved if we can just keep moving and looking forward together.
With you to the end,
The Rad-ifier
 |
As PLC's Press Secretary, Matt Willingham writes, reads, edits, tweets, updates, and works with a camera so as to connect hearts and minds to Iraqi children in need. On the side, he likes reading stories, devouring the great food his wife cooks up and exploring DSLR work. He's also mildly obsessed with Twitter: @mehtin. |
Three Ways to Pursue Your Vision While in a Holding Pattern
February 3, 2012 by Jeremy · Leave a Comment
Note: This is the third post of a three-part series on defining and achieving Vision. Click the links to read part one and part two.
I remember those early, heady days when we founded the Preemptive Love Coalition and we envisioned—for the first time—an Iraq free of the burdensome backlog of children waiting in line for heart surgery. I remember calling families to alert them that we could finally send their child to heart surgery, only to hear on the other end of the line a polite-but-devastated, “It’s too late. My child died yesterday.”
I’ve sat in different waiting rooms across the country where children were waiting to be seen by the doctor, and I’ve seen children die before my eyes—literally while waiting in line.
We’ve said from the beginning that our mission is to “eradicate the backlog.” But our vision, stated more positively, is that every Iraqi child would have access to the surgical intervention they require to thrive.
Since 2003 and the start of the war, an estimated 50,000 children have been born into The Backlog. There is no way of knowing how many were already alive and waiting in line before that time; nor do we know how many we have lost during that period nationwide.
In that time, while seeking to serve these children, we have faced bombings, death threats, the imprisonment of our staff, armed conflict in the cities where we’ve worked, political roils, funding crises, and partnerships that have turned predatory.
The minefields you will have to endure while pursuing your vision are complex. All the easy stuff has been accomplished already! The things that remain are usually fraught with risk and even danger. Depending on your context, it will become impossible at times to move forward with your vision at all.
So what do you do when you are placed in a holding pattern? Like these Iraqi children I’ve sat with and held, the “waiting room” is where many a vision has died. Visions need activity. They need momentum. They need progress.
Below are three things I’ve consistently done to nurture vision while stuck, for reasons beyond my control, in the waiting room.
1) Plan. Whether the vision you are nurturing is one for your marriage, your children, your business, or some social issue across the world, nothing gets done well without planning. When you start to become dissatisfied with the world (marriage, business, etc) as it is; when you start to envision a better way to live or a solution to one of the world’s intractable problems, you must begin to plan.
Planning means different things relative to the vision in question. It might mean quiet research on the problem itself. It might require a lot of info gathering about proposed and enacted solutions currently in the marketplace. If the problem is really so bad, why has no one else tackled it yet? What are the obstacles to success? Is the space crowded with solutions already? What would you need to do in order to bring something new to the field? What will it cost if it all goes well? What will it cost if it all goes terribly?
Woe to the visionary who jumps in without planning. The waiting room is one of the most important places for a vision to begin, as it gives us time to make our missteps on paper before ever spending a dime or wasting the time of others in the real world.
2) Position. I’ve met many people along this journey who want to eradicate poverty, provide clean water, transform social problems across Iraq and the Middle East, etc. Among the worst things I’ve seen passionate visionaries do is a chronic failure to become well-positioned in the field of choice so that expertise and solutions might flow more naturally.
A well-intentioned twenty-something starts a new non-profit organization out of Idaho to help Darfur. A well-to-do family from the suburbs launches a ministry to the homeless downtown. A businessman seeks to change industries and launch a new venture at the invitation of a friend.
Sometimes these things work well enough. But if you are pursuing a vision for the future as it should be, and not merely as it is, you must position yourself for the desired change.
Whenever possible, I advocate networking and proximity. Trying to engineer a vision for another part of the world from the comfort of your living room in America is usually a bad idea. A reliance on internet material instead of diverse, first-hand accounts from your customers or constituents just won’t cut it. Whether you are in business or in international development—indeed even as a parent or a spouse—vision is about meeting the needs of others. We must be in a position to accurately understand the needs of those for whom we are pursuing our vision.
When the waiting room keeps you from fully acting upon your desired vision, sometimes the best thing you can do is move your body; get closer to the action; and hold more meetings with all relevant parties to ensure that you deeply understand the issues affecting them.
3) Pray. I won’t spend my time on a vision that I can accomplish on my own. Anything small enough to be accomplished by me, without the intervention of God, is a task that I am happy to forgo and leave for someone else.
When I pursue vision, I choose to work on things that overwhelm me and cause me to go to God in prayerful dependence. In fact, one of the greatest things for me about pursuing vision is the act of worship that it can become; not worship of the vision itself, but worship of the God who alone can sovereignly work through human freedom to bring about a better future.
I realize not all readers and visionaries will agree with me on this point. But when I am sitting in the waiting room of vision (or riding the wave of visionary success, for that matter), I commit myself again and again to God who hears, who cares, and who proactively works in this world to set all wrongs to right.
The snares that lay in wait for you on your journey to fulfill your vision are beyond number. The delays and unexpected detours have caused the death of countless visions and visionaries. Planning, positioning and prayer are neither exhaustive nor fool-proof, but without these disciplines, my vision that every Iraqi child would have access to the cardiac surgical intervention they require to thrive in childhood and become fully-contributing members of society would have long-since died in the many waiting rooms that have beset us along the way.
Are you in a holding pattern? Are you waiting on details to be clarified? Is your how still taking shape now that you’ve defined the what of your vision?
Keep planning, get positioned, and by all means I commend to you the God Who Cares.
These things are not passing. They are still a part of the active pursuit of your vision. Do you see it differently? Do you have other disciplines you use when stuck in one of life’s waiting rooms? I would love to hear about it. Send me an email by clicking this link.
 |
Jeremy Courtney lives and loves in Iraq as a co-founder and Executive Director of the Preemptive Love Coalition. He's also the father of two spectacular children, and married to the lovely Jessica Courtney. When not absorbed in PLC work he can be found writing songs and singing about hope and future. Follow Jeremy on Twitter: @JCourt. |
On Vision: Defining The “What” Before The “How”
January 30, 2012 by Jeremy · Leave a Comment
Note: This is the second of a three-part series on defining and achieving Vision. Click here to read the first part of this series.
I was sitting in an Iraqi hotel lobby in 2007 when one of the hotel staff who was serving me tea approached me and asked: “Can you help my cousin? His daughter was born with a hole in her heart, and no one in all of Iraq can help her. Please, can you help?”
I had just moved to Iraq with my family to work with a different NGO. I didn’t know anything about heart surgery for children or anything about taking children to other countries for treatment.
From the beginning, helping this little girl seemed impossible. And she wasn’t the first child I’d met in Iraq with a life-threatening heart defect. In fact, it seemed like almost everyone knew someone with a child who was born with a messed up heart.
My work with the organization I was with was not capturing my heart. It seemed to lack both vision and impact. And, in any case, it was not set up with an exit strategy—there was no developmental finish line.
Around the same time, Cody Fisher began telling me of his NGO work with many of these children in need whose files were piling up on his friend’s desk as she sought to find them heart surgeries outside the country. The more I inquired, the more intrigued I became.
I learned that there were seven hundred children within a two hour drive of our city who were waiting in line for lifesaving heart surgery. You would never find a backlog that large anywhere in America!
Over the course of this journey, my wife, Cody Fisher, Michelle (then Bailey) Fisher and I chaffed under the tyranny of life as we knew it in Iraq.
After all, it seemed that many of these heart defects were not simply occurring naturally but were probably directly attributable to acts of war—both martial and economic. This was an issue of justice. As Americans, we felt directly responsible for some of this. But it was primarily as Christians that we decided to jump into the unknown and commit ourselves indefinitely to the cause.
Defining the cause itself could have taken us a number of different directions. I am grateful to God that we got this one right amidst all the unknowns: we defined the what before the how.
Would we create an organization primarily because Jeremy had met a little girl in a hotel lobby? No. Would we create an organization primarily because Cody had a few connections to get us off the ground quickly? No.
From the very beginning we established a vision that was far more grand than anything else in cardiac care nationwide.
“… to eradicate the backlog of Iraqi children waiting in line for lifesaving heart surgeries.”
Looking back, it was ludicrous. It was naive. But it was never a mere “dream.” It was a vision. (See my last post on my differentiation between a dream and a vision). There was a moral conviction behind it. It would never be enough for us to simply help the children who crossed our path. It would never be enough to clear the files or the “backlog” on our desk. We had to exist for all the children of Iraq who were waiting in line for lifesaving heart surgery.
Months after articulating our vision for a Backlog-free Iraq, I learned that the leading expert in the region had actually dumbed down the number of children waiting for surgery because he did not want to scare us off. The number was actually 5X greater—closer to four thousand children. We were still waiting on estimates from the rest of the country.
We started to suspect ten thousand children or more were waiting for surgery. And we were not smart enough at that time to really question how many new children were born into the country each year in need of heart surgery.
We were almost immediately faced with a crisis. Our 20-child per year pace was never going to “eradicate the backlog.” Our methodology—the how—could never see our vision realized.
Do we change our vision to meet our methods, or must we change our methods to meet our vision?
Nothing had changed in our desire to see Iraq free of a burdensome backlog. We had established our vision—our what—before we had a clear idea how we were going to bring it about. So we stuck with our vision and forced our methods to catch up.
We redoubled our commitment to eradicate the backlog. We personified “The Backlog”—for he was a devilish foe who needed to be vanquished by all the heroes like you who would partner with us in the coming years. The Backlog only existed because of injustice—both local and internationally imposed. To defeat The Backlog would be more than a triumph of our organization; it would be a victory for every family across Iraq, because every family across Iraq is susceptible to congenital heart disease, the number one birth defect in Iraq and in the world.
Our vision was still maturing, to be sure, but we got this one thing right: we established the what before the how.
There are other organizations that work into Iraq in an effort to help children with heart disease. But sometimes I wonder if the how has taken precedence over the what. Candid conversations often reveal a complete absence of vision; a settling for the methodology of today for lack of a compelling picture of the future.
Since our inception in 2007, we have made four major programatic (methodological) changes in an effort to stay the course and eradicate The Backlog. Every one of them was scary. Every one of them could have been a colossal failure. But vision demands innovation and risk.
Do you have a hard time accepting the world as it is? Do you feel morally compelled to work for a different future? Do you have a vision that you are currently nurturing or pursuing? If so, do yourself a favor: define the what before the how. Methods change with technology, culture and economics. Don’t focus on the how. Get your sweeping vision right by defining the destination point at which you want to arrive. Let the how work itself out one step at a time and don’t sacrifice your “what” for a method that leads you astray.
Can I be a helpful ear as as you try to work out your vision? Don’t hesitate to send me an email by clicking this link!
|
Jeremy Courtney lives and loves in Iraq as a co-founder and Executive Director of the Preemptive Love Coalition. He's also the father of two spectacular children, and married to the lovely Jessica Courtney. When not absorbed in PLC work he can be found writing songs and singing about hope and future. Follow Jeremy on Twitter: @JCourt. |
Do You Have Dreams, Or Do You Have Vision?
January 27, 2012 by Jeremy · Leave a Comment
I have a hard time accepting things as they are. I’m more of a “how they should be” kind of guy. I’d rather vacation in Iraq, Yemen or Libya than Paris, London or Tokyo. I see discrepancies and obsess over them. My team says I’m “persnickety”—I prefer to think of myself as “particular” or “exacting.” To-may-to, to-mah-to.
In any case, I operate daily according to a vision of the future that is not yet reality.
I prefer the word “vision” to the word “dream” because dreams are so often associated with “dreaming”, “dreamy” and “dreamers.” “Dream” has connotations of other-worldliness. Apart from Martin Luther King’s wonderful speech, most “I have a dream” talk that I’ve encountered reeks of non-action, an assumption that dreaming alone is enough to spark the desired change.
Think of the spate of status updates and tweets on New Year’s Eve in which people dreamed (and invoked Dreaming’s close cousins, “Hope” and “Wish”) for world peace, an eradication of poverty, and global sing-alongs. At the risk of sounding cynical, much of our dreaming is just socially conscious enough to sound engaged and just vague enough to require zero effort of our own.
Therefore, I prefer to have vision over dreams. In the way I use the word, vision requires much of me. I work on vision. I plan for vision. I submit my vision to the critique of others so that it will be refined and strengthened. I seek partnerships to bring the vision into reality. And I pray while waiting for the correct timing to pursue vision.
This post marks the launch of a series on vision – how to define it, nurture it, pursue it and succeed in it. Ultimately I want to encourage others out there who have a hard time accepting things as they are. I want to ignite more passion in the hearts of those of you who insist on returning things to how they should be.
In the process, you will get a clearer picture of what it has required for us to get to this point as an organization. I will be honest about our failures and I will paint a picture of a future Iraq—and a future world—that I hope you will find compelling and inspiring.
We are not just out here in Iraq cranking out heart surgeries. There is a much more sweeping vision, and I feel I’ve failed to bring that to the fore regularly enough.
As you read, if there is anything you feel you’d like to ask or any way in which I might spur you on in your vision, don’t hesitate to send me an email by clicking this link.
|
Jeremy Courtney lives and loves in Iraq as a co-founder and Executive Director of the Preemptive Love Coalition. He's also the father of two spectacular children, and married to the lovely Jessica Courtney. When not absorbed in PLC work he can be found writing songs and singing about hope and future. Follow Jeremy on Twitter: @JCourt. |
It’s Here: The #1 Surgical Training Program In Iraq
November 2, 2011 by matt · Leave a Comment
Have you heard about Remedy Fellowship? It represents our most comprehensive strategy for saving lives to date!
You know all those short-term surgical missions you’ve been sending to Iraq? Well we’re taking the leading specialists from those teams and planting them in Iraq for an entire year!
Back in 2007 we told you we wanted to save lives, and you believed us, joined us and made it happen! Now join us and the rest of the Coalition again in this new stage of life-saving and doctor-training!
Visit the Remedy Fellowship webpage here to learn more about how you can make this happen!
###
Our 7th Remedy Mission in Iraq begins this weekend! Surgical missions like this one made larger programs like Remedy Fellowship possible, and none of them could have happened without your care. Stay tuned as we bring you more stories directly from the hospital!
|
As PLC's Press Secretary, Matt Willingham writes, reads, edits, tweets, updates, and works with a camera so as to connect hearts and minds to Iraqi children in need. On the side, he likes reading stories, devouring the great food his wife cooks up and exploring DSLR work. He's also mildly obsessed with Twitter: @mehtin. |
5 Ways to Destroy a Nation’s Healthcare System
September 9, 2011 by Ryan · 4 Comments
Whenever someone hears about our kids or reads about our work they almost always arrive at the same question: “How did Iraq get this way?” “What caused this?” “Who’s to blame?”
Well, after 4 years of working throughout this country we believe we can provide you with a concise answer to that incredibly complex question. This isn’t about guilting anyone or pointing the finger (there’s already too much of that going around), but it is a hard look at the answer to your question.
Based on Iraq’s history, here are 5 ways to destroy a nation’s healthcare system:
1. Limit a country’s ability to operate politically and economically
In 1990 the UN Security Council passed Resolution 661, which imposed broad, restrictive regulations upon Iraq. In a nutshell, these regulations stipulated that no country in the UN could import or receive any goods from the country.
Unfortunately, the sanctions did more than impede the political and military action of the Iraqi aggressors. The Iraqi economy, that had been so dependent upon oil exports and foreign trade, crashed as a direct result of the Resolution 661.
In 1989 Iraq’s gross domestic profit was over $66 billion. Just seven years later it was estimated as being $10.8 billion. In 1989, annual income per household was $3,510, and by 1996 had fallen to less than $500. Before the sanctions, 93% of the population had ready access to healthcare institutions, which were staffed primarily by physicians who had been trained in Europe or the United States.
This economic collapse primed the country for the health crisis it is in today, a health crisis that has lead to the death of inestimable millions over the last two decades.
2. Slash governmental healthcare funding
In the 1990′s Saddam Hussein cut spending on healthcare by 90%. Continued education, supplies of necessary equipment, and valuable public health programs all suffered without adequate funding research.
Without funding and governmental support, the healthcare system deteriorated.
3. Reduce the number of medical professionals in the country
In some areas, insurgents made it a practice of targeting medical professionals. Although many doctors were not individually targeted, they were still in danger. Ambulances were frequently robbed of their medical supplies, and it was not uncommon for gunmen to enter hospitals and force doctors to care for their injured family members or comrades.
Another blow was dealt to the stability of Iraq’s healthcare when many doctors and nurses, who were lucky enough to escape death, fled the country in a mass exodus, further damaging the quality of the Iraqi healthcare system.
The murder and exodus of Iraqi healthcare professionals is tragic. It has left many families broken and many patients without the care that they need. But the negative effects extend beyond their families and the patients they left behind. Without their mentor-ship, expertise, and knowledge, generations of students from universities and teaching hospitals will continue to have insubstantial educations.
4. Destroy physical healthcare infrastructure
In 2003 American and Coalition forces destroyed two primary public health laboratories and an estimated 12% of hospitals. While speaking about the state of the nation’s healthcare infrastructure, former Minister of Health of Iraq, Khudair Abbas, explained that of the remaining primary care centers, “15% have been looted. Even though 80% remain intact, 40% need extensive repairs…13% do not have clean water and one third are staffed primarily by paramedics rather than physicians”.
During the Gulf War, American and coalition forces destroyed key elements of Iraq’s infrastructure. “Bridges, communications, electricity supplies, water and sewage systems, weapons factories, healthcare facilities, administrative centers, warehouses” and homes were destroyed. While this may have been a strategy aimed at ceasing Iraq’s ability to make war, this strategy did far more than defeat the Iraqi military.
5. Overburden the healthcare system by creating too many patients
The above contributing factors deal primarily with political, structural, organizational, or educational deficits. Ultimately, however, it is the population of patients that compose the largest component of any healthcare system. And, regrettably, there is a vast population of patients in Iraq.
The demolition of water and sewage treatment plants lead to outbreaks of typhoid and cholera. In 1989, there were no cases of cholera per 100,000 people; just 5 years later there were 1,344 cases per 100,000 people.
According to studies, by 1996 31% of children under five were chronically malnourished. Just a year later, there were a million children under the age of five who were malnourished, and a year after that 70% of women were suffering from anemia. Another study, consistent with the information on malnutrition, found widespread, chronic stunting in school children as an indication of long-term malnutrition.
Poverty’s wide-spread negatively affects the livelihood of the Iraqi people. Low socioeconomic status is associated with lower levels of education, poorer nutritional intake, and higher risk of congenital heart defects.
Research shows that poor diet contributes to far more negative effects than weight loss, anemia, nutritional deficiency, and compromised immune system. Without the funds to afford healthier food, mothers with higher intake of saturated fats and lower intake of nicotinamide (vitamin B3) have increased risk of giving birth to children with congenital heart defects. 5, 8 Furthermore, low dietary intake levels of folic acid (vitamin B9) around the time of conception have been linked to higher risk of neural tube disorders.
But nutrition and education are not the sole arbiters of death and ill health. Many parts of the country still suffer from the chemical and biological attacks perpetrated by Saddam Hussein. Not only are individuals suffering from primary exposure, but research supports that children of those who were exposed suffer secondary effects in the form of birth defects.
The list of health problems and their contributing factors continues ad nauseam, and the patient-load continues to overwhelm doctors.
The evidence shows that the state of Iraq’s healthcare system has been nearly two decades in the making. The downward spiral began with sanctions in the 1990’s by making the nation more susceptible to economic collapse. It continued with a multitude of factors including military action by the US and Coalition forces, violence wrought by religious extremists, and a vast backlog of patients.
—–
The question remains, is it too late for Iraqis to rebuild their healthcare system?
Is Iraq too far gone?
Of course not! The restoration of Iraq’s medical infrastructure is happening now!
This November 5th will be our biggest surgical mission yet–lives will be saved, doctors will be trained and Iraq will be one big step closer to restoring what was broken!
 |
Ryan Rosenberry is spending his summer as a PLC intern (’11) compiling Remedy reports and researching CHD and prenatal care. When not citing sources, this pre-med California native can be found playing the guitar (or piano), partaking in a game of Ultimate Frisbee, or doodling his favorite animal: the pink sea slug. |
3 Reasons You Can Give Someone To Show Them Iraq Is Changing For The Better
June 26, 2011 by Cody · 1 Comment
Yesterday on the drive to southern Iraq we ran over a pothole. Actually, we ran over several potholes.
The biggest pothole of the day – and the same one that made the loudest noise as our van clung to its parts – was the same one that caused my Iraqi friend next to me to groan and say, “I just want to see change. I want to see something different now that the war’s over. Where are the new roads? Where are the signs that Iraq is changing?”
The next pothole we hit launched us both into a conversation attempting to answer that question. It kept us busy for most of the drive, but we kept coming back to the same 3 immediate signs that Iraq is changing for the better.
Sign #1: Right now, families are traveling from all over southern Iraq to come to this Remedy Mission. Before, families were lining up to leave the country trying to find the doctors that could save their children from their heart defects. Today, families are lining up outside a hospital in southern Iraq, waiting for their child’s chance at a lifesaving heart surgery. For the first time, families don’t need to leave the country to find the cure.
Sign #2: This week, a Sunni family will hand their child over to a Shiite doctor to be saved. In 2007, at the height of the violence in Iraq between Sunni and Shiites, this would have been unheard of. Now, the disease that’s threatening their children is bringing them together!
Sign #3: The notorious “brain drain” that happened when 20,000 of the 34,000 registered doctors in Iraq fled during the war is being reversed. During our last Remedy Mission in northern Iraq we met one of the doctors who had returned. Today we’re not only seeing doctors return, but – thanks to Remedy Missions – the doctors who never left are being equipped and trained, too. Their training is changing the tide of healthcare in Iraq.
So, the next time you hear someone looking for a reason to believe Iraq is changing for the better, start by giving them these 3.
Or better yet, show them the above photo of Rayed smiling before he received his lifesaving heart surgery during Remedy Mission V. Then tell them to stay tuned because Remedy Mission VI is already underway here in southern Iraq!
Our Partners:
 |
Cody Fisher is the co-founder and Development Director of the Preemptive Love Coalition. He moved to Iraq in 2007 where he met his wife and since then they've been waging peace and mending hearts across Iraq. His passions are photography, peacemaking, and food that doesn't come out of a can. You can follow him on Twitter: |
Followthrough Is Central To Why We Choose To Live In Country
April 18, 2011 by matt · Leave a Comment
People had a lot of questions when my wife and I said we wanted to move to Iraq. Family and friends were (understandably) concerned, and we had to be ready with a response about our work, our safety, and pretty much everything else involved in moving to a wartorn country.
Most questions weren’t difficult to answer. Some were difficult for people to hear, for sure, but we knew our responses.
But there was one question that took some thinking. An older man (in front of a crowd of 200 people, I might add) asked, “Why can’t you just facilitate the surgeries from the United States? Why do you have to live there?” I remember fidgeting a little and saying something about the importance of caring and equipping in-person.
If I had another shot at answering that question, though, I wouldn’t fidget: Followthrough would be my answer.
If we’re going to put an end to this backlog of sick children, it’s going to take the daily training, equipping and relationship-building of our Followthrough team.
We could certainly live stateside. It’d probably make fundraising easier, and we could swoop into Iraq like whites in shining armor, save a whole bunch of lives and then make our grand exit.
But that would be more about us than about what the people of Iraq are actually asking for.
Many of Iraq’s best and brightest either fled or were killed under Saddam Hussein’s regime, and subsequently the nation as a whole suffered a massive braindrain. So what Iraqis need, is training, information, and empowerment to restore their country to what it once was (and beyond!), and that’s where Followthrough comes in.
We aren’t handing out prescriptions and orders, but we are here if they have any questions – and they have a lot! How to bathe a child post-op, which medications to take, how to avoid an infection, and if/when they should go in for post-op checkups are just a few of the many questions parents are asking.
But the medical training is just one part of it all. We want to know the people we’re working with and to understand them; their worldview, their joys, their concerns, beliefs and fears.
Followthrough is our way of saying no to life in the proverbial ivory tower and yes to an in-the-flesh kind of compassion that ultimately blesses and benefits us as we’re working to bless and benefit the people of Iraq.
Photo credit: Tech Trends
|
As PLC's Press Secretary, Matt Willingham writes, reads, edits, tweets, updates, and works with a camera so as to connect hearts and minds to Iraqi children in need. On the side, he likes reading stories, devouring the great food his wife cooks up and exploring DSLR work. He's also mildly obsessed with Twitter: @mehtin. |
Intro To Followthrough: How Mothers Will Change The Tide In Iraq
April 8, 2011 by Cody · 1 Comment
We’re all about providing surgeries to children – I think we’ve made that pretty clear – but we’re also passionate about getting the rest of the family involved.
That means we aren’t standing by an entire generation of children with CHD but also the communities, the support groups, and the leaders who play a crucial role in improving local healthcare throughout the country.
Without a doubt, some of Iraq’s strongest leaders are the mothers.
They’re leading the way by asking real questions about proper nutrition, pre-natal care, post-op rehabilitation for their children, the causes of heart defects, and how they can be a part of the solution. They aren’t content to be bystanders.
And these questions are encouraging, because they prove that mothers here see that something’s wrong, and they want to do something about it.
That’s why our Followthrough program is seeking to unite mothers all over Iraq and give them the tools they need to be the remedy. Then, once they’ve been equipped, we set them loose to pass it on to the next mother.
‘Equipping’ here means educating them on the value of healthcare, what robust nutrition looks like here with the available foods in Iraq, how to look after children with heart disease, and how all of this will help lower the rate of children born with heart defects each year.
Educating and empowering mothers to better care for their children is the first step toward attacking this CHD problem at the source.
We want them to know that it doesn’t take a PhD to fight heart disease. We all can play a role.
Imagine women all over Iraq, representing multiple ethnicities, faiths, and tribes, all united together with the common goal – to create a better future for their children!
Stick with us during the coming weeks to see how moms are changing the tide in Iraq!
|
Cody Fisher is the co-founder and Development Director of the Preemptive Love Coalition. He moved to Iraq in 2007 where he met his wife and since then they've been waging peace and mending hearts across Iraq. His passions are photography, peacemaking, and food that doesn't come out of a can. You can follow him on Twitter: |
Surgery, the “Neglected Stepchild” of Global Health
April 3, 2011 by Alex · 2 Comments
In preparing for my 2nd internship with PLC this summer I came across an article written by two well-known global health advocates and physicians (a prof at Harvard and the current president of Dartmouth, if you’re into credentials) on the topic of surgery in the global health movement. [Paul E. Farmer and Jim Y. Kim. 2008. "Surgery and Global Health: a View from Beyond the OR." World Journal of Surgery 32:533-536].
After discussing this article with one of the directors at PLC and thinking about our current model for surgical aid in Iraq, a few points stood out:
The authors’ first argument is that surgery is the “neglected stepchild of global healthcare.” The fact is, although surgical diseases (CHD being one of the most prevalent) are a major cause of death and disability in much of the world, the vast majority of healthcare programs don’t address surgical needs.
Why? Because surgical interventions are usually complicated and require a larger investment than other kinds of health interventions, and treating surgical diseases requires a more advanced infrastructure and the involvement of more professionals than treating, for instance, malnutrition or malaria.
There is also the fact that surgical diseases have lacked the same kind of advocacy and exposure that have led to funding and programs for “high-profile” diseases like tuberculosis or AIDS.
The other major issue addressed by Farmer and Kim is that countries that actually have the surgical services often only have them in just a few locales, and the treatment is usually too expensive to be accessible by most of the population.
The question then arises: how do we make this treatment available in settings where infrastructure is poor, trained professionals are scarce, equipment is needed, and “the only thing not needed is disease, which exists abundantly.”
Remedy Missions are our answer to that question.
As you know, we recently moved from sending children abroad for surgery to a model that provides more surgeries at less cost while simultaneously training local professionals.
These Remedy Missions specifically address the impediments to surgery in global health described by Farmer and Kim.
They provide treatment of CHD for families that would never be able to afford traveling abroad for surgery. Our work also means we’re freeing surgeons up to focus on surgery, because, as Farmer and Kim write, “clearly we don’t want surgeons to be dragged out of the operating room to manage logistics, supply chains…and financing.”
Remedy Missions provide crucial training for all the different health professionals that are required for a surgery to be successful (surgeons, cardiologists, nurses, etc.).
This process of providing surgery and training is also an exercise in infrastructure building as we work toward the development of heart centers in northern and southern Iraq. The fact that we can count both regional and national governments as partners addresses the need for surgical care in the public sector in Iraq, and it bodes especially well for poor families who will need to receive treatment in the future.
Lastly, the partnership and advocacy of our supporters (that’s YOU) is helping to raise awareness of the burden of CHD and other surgical diseases in places like Iraq.
With well-planned, structured interventions that take into account the needs and problems associated with surgical disease globally, and the support and advocacy of a Coalition of concerned individuals and communities (that’d be you again), problems like CHD can cease to be a “neglected stepchild” of global health and instead serve as a model for building health systems and effecting powerful change in global contexts.
 |
Alex Phillips, a two-time PLC summer intern ('10 & '11), has invested his heart into the surgical and medicinal aid available to the children of Iraq, hoping to better understand the complicated ties between poverty and health. On his off days, Alex spends his time reading up on his field, listening to punk rock, riding his bike, and updating his Twitter: @_alexphillips. |
-
Popular Tags
-
Amman
Arab
Baghdad
BSSL
Buy Shoes. Save Lives.
buyshoessavelives
CHD
children
Congenital Heart Disease
Development
echocardiogram
God
heart
heart disease
heart surgeries
Heart Surgery
hope
hospital
Hussein
ICHF
ICU
Internship
Iraq
Iraqi children
Istanbul
Jeremy Courtney
Jordan
Klash
Kurd
Kurdish
Kurdistan
nasiriyah
peace
Peacemaking
PLC
remedy
Remedy Mission
Rezhin
saddam hussein
Southern Iraq
sulaymaniyah
Surgery
Tarza
Turkey
Wordless Wednesday
-
Archives
 | Get our good news stories straight into your reader or inbox for free! |
OUR BLOGGERS
 |
Matt Willingham is the PLC press secretary and writes primarily on politics, history, general updates and visual peacemaking through photography and film. |
|
Cody Fisher is a PLC cofounder and writes primarily on program development and peacemaking by giving us a lens into the lives of the real people we love. |
|
Jeremy Courtney is a PLC cofounder and writes primarily to emphasize our vision and values, including organizational and financial transparency. |
Preemptive Love Coalition provides lifesaving heart surgeries for Iraqi kids in pursuit of peace between communities at odds. We offer the 30,000 Iraqi children suffering from life-threatening heart defects a chance at the surgery they need to save their lives. With our world-class international surgical partners we create long-term solutions by training local Iraqi doctors and nurses so they can sustainably save lives without our help.