Sunday, August 4, 2013

M.E.M.O. 7G: The Journey Awaits

What is M.E.M.O.? What is 7G? What is this journey you speak of?

Welcome to the official M.E.M.O. 7G Mission Trip blog, where you can read and see firsthand accounts of the mission trip experience. We first would like to say thank you. Thank you for taking the time to read this blog. We hope that you will enjoy reading the account our mission trip this year. Without further ado, let's begin on this journey, together...

First, some background information. We are Medical, Educational Missions & Outreach, or M.E.M.O. for short. 
Spread across three chapters at UCI, UCLA, and UCSD, we are a non-profit, student-run, and humanitarian organization set out to travel to Vietnam every year and carry out our six projects, with a seventh project to come. In short, they are:

(1) Medical Clinics: with a group of doctors, health professionals, and our team of student volunteers, we hold free health clinics in villages, conducting preliminary needs assessment (i.e. blood pressure, ultrasound, EKG, etc.) based on the patients' chief complaint and treating them with the highest ethical standard.

(2) HOPE Project: with the funds raised during the school year, they are used to help give children in orphanages a future, providing monetary upkeep, free health check-up's, school supplies, clothing, and a chance for kids to be kids.

(3) Scholarship Program: a donation of only $60 will allow a child in Vietnam to stay in school for an entire year, which is fundamental to our principle that education provides the means to help children raise above their current living conditions. 

(4) Heart Program: as we bring surgeons to Vietnam, they provide children with congenital heart disease with life-saving surgery that allows them to live normal lives.

(5) Dental Program: this is our second year running this program; lead by Dr. Timothy Bui, it provides tooth cleaning, extraction, and filling in order to help maintain oral hygiene and prevent future pain and diseases along with the medical clinics. 

(6) Transfer of Technology: along with the funds that we have raised during the year, we also provide medical supplies to local hospitals and teach technical skills to medical students from our doctors so that they can have the means to improve their health care. 

(7) Hepatitis B Program - will be carried out during Mission Trip 8G: With the help of UNAVSA, this program will vaccinate newborns who have infected mothers by training midwives as well as screen orphans and vaccinate unaffected individuals, addressing the Hepatitis B pandemic that is frequently overlooked.

As you can tell by the "7" in 7G, this will be our 7th annual mission trip to Vietnam. With the "G" standing for generation, we hope to accomplish these goals. What makes 7G different from the other trips? Besides the awesome new people, we have exciting news for this trip:
  • Under the leadership of Dr. Bui, we will be expanding the dental program with three new dental kits for more efficient care compared to one kit last year. 
  • We will have one more EKG machine and three ultrasound machines during the health clinics.
    • In particular, we would like to give our personal gratitude to Sonosite who loaned us one of their ultrasound machines valued at $50,000 for this mission trip (more information at: http://www.sonosite.com/). 
  • Furthermore, we would also like to thank Ultra Light Optics for their generous donation of $5,000 worth of the LED Loupe-Light equipment (further information at: http://www.ultralightoptics.com/). 
  • Last but not least, our group of student volunteers this year will have the privilege of working with the university for the clinics, working side-by-side with local pharmacy, medical, and dental students. This will demonstrate our integration of global medicine and healthcare, unity at the international level.
Let's do this! Ready or not, countdown: 2 days!!! 

Written by Johnson.
 


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