Community Health
Selfless believe that healthcare is a basic human right, and recognises that a healthy population is essential for growth, development, and prosperity in every society. We recognise that effective healthcare can only provided through a well-trained workforce and availability of healthcare resources.
Our pilot Community Health project involves the use of telemedicine to help train healthcare professionals. Telemedicine can be most simply defined as “the use of remote medical expertise at the point of need”. We will be using live videoconferencing, between health professionals in the UK and others located in Bangladesh. Proposed courses include training on HIV counselling and contraceptive use, use of complementary medicine and smoking cessation.
The Community Health project has ambitions to make a sustained effort to help develop healthcare infrastructure in developing countries. Alongside the telemedicine programme, we are continuing to look at ways that we can work to reduce preventable and treatable diseases, which present an enormous health burden for communities in the developing world.
One possible solution to reduce this burden is through ‘Community Clinics’ and we are currently exploring their potential. These clinics are equipped with patient care rooms, health promotion materials and healthcare professional training materials. The clinics are designed to deliver a pro-active approach in providing life-saving vaccinations, provide treatment for basic treatable diseases, provide pre-natal, obstetrical, and post-natal care.
Volunteer Now
Medical students, doctors, nurses, or volunteers with experience working in the health industry, are all needed to assist with the Community Health project. General volunteers are also required to fundraise, manage and develop activities.
There are also numerous volunteering opportunities for more experienced health professionals who are interested in training their colleagues abroad.
Some of our recent work:
