SHF and HELOHAITI did it again

Dr. Andres Zuleta and Dr. Theo Edwards along with George Lemieux and Elisabeth Kennedy had an incredibly fruitful trip to the beautiful contry of Haiti. 

Samasta Gets rolling in Haiti

5 Samasta Nuggets

Hi all, Here is your monthly dose of Samasta Nuggets. A list of what Samasta Health Foundation is doing. - What people are doing Did you know? In Bolivia, babies born to women with no education have an infant mortality greater than 1 in 10 live births, while the infant mortality rate of babies born to mothers with at least secondary education is under 1 in 25 live births. So having a secondary education can more than double your baby's chance of survival. That is why we set out to create the SHF community Hub and why we are thrilled that Dr. Liza Arango is joining us to develop an educational program for the parents of our enrolled children. So thank you Dr. Arango and welcome to the Family!!!  

- How are we supporting growth We started to use Asana.com to keep our ducks in a row. Asana allows teams to keep track of the progress made in a seamless way.  - What are we creating With the Help of Dr. Adam Zaentz, an outstanding pediatrician practicing in NYC and a former medical school brother, we are developing the blueprint for the management of the health of the children. With this, the team will know what needs to be done to optimize the health and wellness of our awesome kids.  - How are we helping We are thrilled to welcome Guerda Beausejour, an amazing community nurse, who has been working  in Helo Haiti for one month now. This was all possible thanks to the partnership with Founder Elisabeth Kennedy and her team. Also special thanks to George Lemieux, for the outstanding support, and Amparo for all the groundwork. We are also thrilled to have began talks to bring dental health to the children of Helo Haiti thanks to Dr. Elizabeth Sandoval. We will keep you updated on this progress.

- What is inspiring us What is the secret of happiness? According to this Harvard study, happiness comes from choosing to be happy with whatever you do, strengthening your closest relationships, and taking care of yourself physically, financially and emotionally. Tony Hsieh, Silicon Valley entrepreneur and author of Delivering Happiness takes you in a journey of how he  failed at trying to build a worm selling empire at age six to selling his company to Amazon. All of this, while focusing on creating an environment in which his team was happy to come to work. This 2:53 min video gives you glimpse of what he created by risking it all.

Also please keep Helo Haiti in your thoughts as a massive Hurricane is passing through today and we only hope Haitian people do ok through it.

Samasta team finishes the first Olympic triathlon strong!!! #samastateam #andreszuleta (at South Nags Head, Outer Banks, North Carolina)

Samasta Health Foundation in Action!!!! Samasta STEPS @bocachica on Flickr.

Samasta Health Foundation down the Rio Negro

Rio Negro is a beautiful Mayan village, nestled in the Baja Verapaz mountains of Guatemala. Theirs is one more disturbing story of indigenous populations caught in political crossfire. In this case, between the Guatemalan government and the Guatemalan guerrillas. Many of the people of Rio Negro re-settled in various places following a brutal massacre by the Guatemalan military in 1982, which resulted in hundreds of men, women and children tortured and killed.  

It was the able bodied men who were taken out first. Lured in with a promise of weapons to fight off potential threats, the men were all killed when they went, as a group, to retrieve them.Never dreaming that the women, children and elderly would be a target, the villagers who remained, mourned, and continued on with daily life in the village. A month later, the soldiers brutally tied all of the women and elderly with ropes around their necks and forced them to hike up to a small ravine, where they were shot and the bodies pushed in. Some women jumped off the cliffs, when the soldiers weren't looking, during the hike up to the ravine. Two of them lived through it. Many elderly were shot and pushed off the mountain for walking too slow. Babies were smashed against rocks to their death. And to maintain fear, bodies were skewered on sharpened tree stumps throughout the land. Those who survived these atrocities did so by hiding in caves and moving around the region for several years until the civil war was ended. Some, with the will to peacefully fight back, reclaimed their land several years after the end of the civil war, but many now reside in a reservation called Pacux. 

To get from Pacux to Rio Negro, the villagers typically walk the 7 hours through the mountains, often carrying bundles of wood or other cargo on their backs, held firm by a strip of fabric across the forehead. Although, in recent years, the government has tried to maintain a nurse in the village, they struggle to find someone who will stay there long term. If a medical condition requires a doctor, the villagers must either hike 7 hours to the understaffed, under supplied clinic in Rabinal, or take a boat, a truck, then a bus, which is a long and expensive alternative that is generally not an option.   

#SamastaHealthFoundation is collaborating with the community and the Ministry of Health, to work toward better health and more reliable healthcare for Rio Negro and three surrounding villages who were also impacted by the past brutality. My heart goes out to these resilient and beautiful people. Every step of our hikes and minor pains in my body are nothing short of an honor to endure on behalf of such loving and deserving people who have been through hardship that most cannot begin to imagine. Thank you to all who have helped here and continue to push our efforts forward: Eileen Kreek, Lili Marisol Dubon, Sheny XiGo, Marissa Ingram, Dr. Behrang Dehkardi, Dr. Theo Edwards, Maria Amparo Ramirez, Mary Haring Purvis, George Lemieux, Michael Cooley, Dragan Stojanovic, and the one whose vision brought us all together Dr. Andres Zuleta.

 Writen by

MaryAlexandra Ingram

Faneth Gomez doing a great job with the awesome elders of Boca Chica @samastahealthf @global_health @colombiaoficial @_telemedicine_ (at Tierra Bomba, Bolivar, Colombia)

Bonjour Haiti! SHF Finds New Partners in Far Off Places

Doctor Andres Zuleta, founder of Samasta Health Foundation (SHF),  flew to the beautiful land of Haiti earlier this month in search of communities that could benefit from telehealth services.  An adventurous trip that included planes, boats, and buses, Dr. Zuleta traveled from the island of Tortue to Les Cayes, creating rich new connections and partnerships along the way.  

With the help of Mission Aviation Fellowship, Mitch Tercius with his Hummer, and a boat ride through Caribbean waters, Dr. Zuleta managed to reach Isla de le Tortue, or Turtle Island, one of the locations used for filming Pirates of the Caribbean.  Stepping onto the Tortue sands, he was ready to find the next far-off place where SHF might be put to good use.  Far-off might be an understatement, the hospital on the island is not even on a map.  The small hospital, manned by only two doctors, is a prime candidate for telemedicine solutions to build capacitance.

Dr. Zuleta's next stop was to visit the site of the Les Cayes based nonprofit "HELO Haiti."  HELO is on a mission to provide education and a healthy environment to orphaned and abandoned children.  With three homes to care for, each housing 12 to 15 children, HELO could definitely utilize telehealth technology to connect to off-site healthcare providers.  For more information on HELO Haiti, check their webpage at http://www.helohaiti.org/ With another exciting adventure under our belt, SHF is looking forward to bringing telemedicine solutions HELO Haiti and Torture Island.  While the foundation is still in the process of assessing the needs of the hospital on the Island, we are ready to expand our services to HELO as soon as we find volunteers to conduct health management of the 50+ children, on the ground, in Les Cayes.  If you are interested in being involved with the project contact us at [email protected].   

We are excited and grateful for the opportunity to build relationships with so many incredible people who are working tirelessly to be agents of change in the world.  Once again, give a special thanks to Dr. Zuleta for his dedication to changing the world through healthcare.  

How to Complete 34 Hours of Work in One Day!!!

Is it really possible to complete 34 hours of work in one day? It may sound obvious, but the trick is to find organizations and people who want to put their expertise to work for a collective passion or cause.  As obvious as it is, how many of us employ this method to aid in the accomplishment of our important tasks? @samastahealthfoundation, we were fortunate enough to connect with Deep Datta, from Benetech, one of the Code4Good Alliance sponsors. Benetech helps other organizations develop technology to improve the world in industries ranging from mental health to human rights.

Deep invited Samasta Health Foundation to the Computer Human Interaction Conference,  www.chi2016.acm.org in sillicon Valley http://chi4good.codealliance.org/. At this event, people from all over the world with expertise in human computer interaction get together in a hackathon-like environment and work to create, innovate and improve existing platforms with enhancement of life in mind. 

If you have ever been to a tech event you can relate to the incredible vibe of innovators. Being surrounded by smart, non-pretentious people who are working hard to get things done is indescribable. Professionals from four countries came to help us with the development of the next generation global health platform. 

During this http://chi4good.codealliance.org/ activity, we went through the project goals, we figured out our user types and focused on the user journey, specifically for doctors.

The day's work included the creation of wireframes using https://moqups.com for the sign up/sign in process and discussion of activities doctors will perform when they log in the system (e.g., doctor's dashboard, interaction through groups, forums etc.). Samasta's five volunteers, all with different human computer interaction backgrounds, spent time brainstorming, contributing valuable new ideas and hands-on practices from which Samasta Health Foundation will leverage in the long run. In all, it was approximately 34 hours of collective work completed, so it might sound obvious, but leveraging the power of collaboration can create impactful doses of progress. 

Kids of Boca Chica help each other to create the future!!! #SAMSTASTEPS (at Tierra Bomba, Bolivar, Colombia)

Setting up in Chitucan @zuleta.andres @maryalexandra25 #global #globalhealthcare #adventure #buildhealth (at Chitucán, Baja Verapaz, Guatemala)

SHF Treks Through Nepal

In August, Samasta Health Foundation's (SHF) Doctors Zuleta and Behkordi traveled to the village of Machchegaun, Nepal, about 40 minutes into the mountains surrounding Kathmandu.  SHF was given a warm welcome by Shanti Yoga Ashram who held a receiving ceremony of flowers and songs in anticipation of the walk-in clinic held on-site the following day.  After seeing over fifty patients from the village and administering everything from vaccinations to eyeglasses, the doctors moved on to their next Nepali adventure.

SHF's next stop was deep into the rice fields where they trekked through far out villages and were able to develop relations with a local community health worker, Mr. Prem Tamang. Tamang founded a small community health center in the village of Dhadagaun, Nepal which he has been in the process of rebuilding after devastation from the April 15' earthquake.  As SHF continues to expand horizons, we are excited to extend our helping hand to Nepal by offering remote telemedicine solutions to Dhadagaun Community Health Center. 

For their final stop, Doctors Zuleta and Behkordi journeyed through Kathmandu's "Tent City," a shantytown inhabited by victims who lost their homes to the April 15' disaster, administering medical treatment to the underserved population there.  With the help of local volunteers, SHF was able to provide a short, two hour clinic, to those with minor ailments and provide case management for one young patient with Rheumatic Fever. SHF would like to give a special thanks to Doctor Zuleta and Doctor Behkordi for their dedication to serve and willingness to go where few others will.  We are looking forward to a bright future as we discover new ways to contribute to the health and happiness of the underserved population in Nepal (and maybe even meet a few sadhus and yogis along the way). 

Ile Vache Haiti with Samasta Health Foundation #haiti, #makeadifference, #makeadventures, #healthy, #health, #charity, #nonprofit, #adventure, #islandlife, #island, #majestic, @samastahealthfdn, @zuleta.andres, #helping, #help, #paradise, #haitian,#haitians (at Île-à-Vache)

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWHurnx3GAs)

Samasta Health Foundation #global #nepali #nepal #nepalese #earthquake #earth #nature#health #healthy @beha07 @zuleta.andres @theo.edwards1 #rice #ricepaddies #adventure #good #contribution #contribute #change #action (at Nepal)

Wish your doctor was on standby 24/7? Help make it a reality for villagers in Zanzibar http://igg.me/at/EhamIbok-cQ/x