Notre Dame medical students are going to Vietnam.
Camera IconNotre Dame medical students are going to Vietnam. Credit: Supplied/Supplied

Notre Dame University medical students sending aid to Vietnam

Jessica NicoFremantle Gazette

MEDICAL students at the University of Notre Dame are collecting more than 100kg worth of medical supplies for the sick and dying in Vietnam’s poorest communities.

The group of half-a-dozen first and second year students will volunteer their time, as well as the equipment, to clinics in Vietnam helping disadvantaged locals and those living with HIV, as well as a school for the blind and a number of orphanages.

Student Lara Franklin said the group had spent the past five months fundraising for equipment such as wound dressings, surgical gloves, saline, gauze, antiseptic solutions and sutures, which would be vital tools for the clinics.

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“The funds and equipment we donate directly impact on health outcomes for the patients attending the clinics,” she said.

“Last year’s group of students talk about how within an hour of arriving at the clinic the IV saline that they had brought with them was being used to provide palliative care to an end-stage HIV patient.

“The funds raised and donated to the clinic will pay for months of anti-viral treatment and other medications for patients who would otherwise go without.

“I think most of us know, or have been told, about the exceptional circumstances in these areas of need; however, being present and experiencing the disadvantage and barriers of providing health care in a developing country will be a completely extraordinary experience.”

Volunteer Vietnam is a not-for-profit University of Notre Dame social justice program begun by medical students in 2005.

Visit https://www.chuffed.org/project/volunteer-vietnam-2017 to donate.

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