As we venture into a new year at Medical Teams, we want to take one last look back at 2024 and all the amazing things we accomplished with your support! In 2024, we helped 9.6 million people in 22 countries. That number includes men, women, children, grandparents, newborns, and many more whose lives were changed for the better thanks to your generosity. From expecting mothers in Ethiopia, to adults battling severe malaria in Tanzania, to children needing dental care in the Pacific Northwest, you boldly stepped up to help provide compassionate medical care to them all. Read more to learn about all the incredible things you helped accomplish the past year, and how you can continue to ensure that people around the world are supported, cared for, and healed. Established Critical Care at the Darién Gap In 2024, we expanded our Colombia program to include new locations in the cities of Apartado, Turbo, and Necoclí in the region of Uraba. These locations lie at the entrance to one of the most dangerous and heavily traveled migrant routes in the world: the Darién Gap. According to the Panamanian government, more than half a million migrants crossed the Darién Gap en route to the United States in 2023. Approximately one-fifth of those who made the crossing were children. We identified that people preparing to make the treacherous crossing needed medical care, health education, hygiene supplies, and other resources to have any hope of safely crossing the dense jungle. We established humanitarian storefronts and safe spaces for migrant families where we provided essential services such as vaccines, family planning, breastfeeding education, and personal hygiene items to alleviate suffering for women, children, older adults, and people with disabilities. These services were especially critical for people like 27-year-old Deisy, who attempted to make the crossing with her husband and two young children. Prior to entering the Gap, she received health education about how to keep her children safe from the various diseases that the jungle climate can cause, as well as hygiene tips to ensure that they had the best chance possible to cross the Gap safely. “I realized that I had very little information about how to take care of my health” she shared. Thanks to your support, Medical Teams was able to care for families like Deisy’s and help make a terrifying journey a little more hopeful. Medical Teams has worked in Colombia since 2019, focusing on reducing barriers to health care access for Venezuelan refugees and migrants, especially for pregnant women, women of reproductive age, and children under five. Medical Teams programs in Colombia aim to reduce morbidity, mortality, and malnutrition rates and increase access to primary healthcare services, sexual and reproductive health, maternal, newborn, and child health, mental health, and non-communicable disease management. Trained and Mobilized Staff and Volunteers This year in Sudan, we continued to invest in local healthcare systems by training volunteers and critical staff like Mazahir. After fleeing her home and landing in the IDP camp in Gedaref, Sudan, nurse Mazahir wanted to find purpose amid her family’s struggles. Despite losing her nursing license paperwork during her escape, Medical Teams helped her obtain new copies and she enthusiastically began working in the camp’s clinic. Medical Teams relied on Mazahir’s expertise to help provide hygiene seminars and staff a rehydration station in her community to respond to a dangerous diarrhea outbreak. “I feel very good now because I can help needy people,” Mazahir shares. “Without Medical Teams, I would be struggling to find a job and support my family.” At Medical Teams, our goal is to equip and empower local healthcare systems to function effectively, and employing local staff like Mazahir is critical to achieving that goal. In 2024, we trained and deployed more than 3,400 community health workers and employed more than 5,000 staff members across our 6 international country programs. Celebrated Important Milestones 20 years in Uganda: Since 2004, your commitment to Uganda has transformed countless lives. Through the turbulence of Ebola outbreaks and regional conflicts, your support has been a steady force for good. These 20 years prove how long-term investment can profoundly impact communities. Your impact over the last two decades in Uganda is nothing short of extraordinary. Here are some highlights: Last year, more than 30,000 mothers safely gave birth thanks to you. Since the creation of two Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs) in refugee camps, more than 3,500 premature babies have received critical care. In the past four years alone, over 5 million children have been screened for malnutrition. More than 1,200 community health workers have been trained to connect their neighbors to vital health care services. 45th Anniversary of Medical Teams: Since 1979 — the year our founder, Ron Post, went to Thailand to care for Cambodian refugees — we’ve provided loving, life-saving care for people facing crisis around the world. Together, with compassionate people like you, we’ve held countless hands, comforted innumerable families, and saved millions of lives. We have stayed true to our calling: daring to love like Jesus, we boldly break barriers to health and restore wholeness to a hurting world. With the support of so many, we have accomplished life-changing work in the past 45 years. Here are just a few highlights of care that was provided thanks to our incredible supporters: 1985 | Volunteers deployed to Ethiopia combated one of the worst famines in modern history, bringing with them over $1,000,000 in lifesaving equipment and supplies. 1994 | After the unimaginable slaughter of 800,000 of their country’s men, women and children, we cared for Rwandans traumatized by the Rwandan Civil War. 1997 | We developed programs in Moldova and Romania, caring for children forgotten in orphanages. We stocked medical supplies, performed surgeries, trained nurses on infant care, and refurbished dilapidated buildings. 2001 | As the nation mourned, our volunteers were on the ground in New York City, offering counseling and comfort to shocked survivors and responders of 9/11. 2013 | Civil unrest transformed Syria into a war zone in 2011. We began caring for Syrian refugees displaced by violence in 2013 by strengthening community health care systems in Lebanon and Turkey. 2019 | We became a key partner to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and now maintain over 60 health facilities in Uganda. This work expanded to Tanzania as vulnerable populations grew. 2025 | Who knows what amazing care we will be able to provide this year with your support! Together, we can be an unstoppable force for good in the world. Stocked Shelves and Clinics with Medical Supplies Thanks to the power of donated medical supplies and 186 amazing volunteers, our distribution center shipped more than $8.7 million in medicines and supplies around the world in 2024. People in 18 countries, from Armenia to Zimbabwe, benefitted from these donated supplies. It takes an incredible effort to get even a single vial of medicine from our warehouse shelves in Oregon into a transport van, onto a plane, across the ocean, and through the doors of a clinic in need. Incredibly, you helped us ship 474 pallets of supplies that helped over 500,000 loving souls who relied on us for life-saving care this past year. Are you moved to love your neighbor through volunteering? Read more about our opportunities to get involved and make 2025 the year that you join Medical Teams’ amazing crew of volunteers! You Helped Care & Connect Serve Up Smiles! Your support made 2024 another great year for our Care & Connect Mobile Health program, which served 6,097 patients in the Pacific Northwest! In total, Medical Teams provided $2,659,725 worth of dental services across 783 clinics. These numbers could not have been possible without your support, our incredible cohort of volunteers, and donated supplies from our trusted health care partners. You helped provide dental care to those who needed it most this year, such as neighbors like Elizabeth. Elizabeth came into one of our mobile clinics on Recovery Day, an annual event organized by the Washington Recovery Alliance that recognizes the achievements of people in recovery and seeks to provide them with ongoing support. Elizabeth, a recovering alcoholic, did not have the resources to seek treatment for her painful cracked tooth – she visited our Care & Connect clinic as part of a Services Fair on Recovery Day and was thrilled to learn that her tooth could be saved. One of our volunteer dentists, Dr. Charles Lewis, repaired the tooth with a composite filling. Elizabeth was so grateful for the compassionate care she received and was encouraged to continue her sobriety journey with renewed hope. Thanks to You, Our Partner in 2024 and Beyond! We are thrilled by what you helped us accomplish in 2024, and we are so proud of our global community who committed to living out our mission to save lives. As we look ahead to 2025, we know that you will stand by our side once more and together we will continue the work of caring for our brothers and sisters around the world, demonstrating the love and compassion that we truly believe all people deserve. You can be part of our success in 2025 – a gift of just $25 provides a basic health checkup for someone in need. You can be the reason that a new mother, a child, a grandparent, or a neighbor experiences the gift of health this year! Previous Post « Historias poderosas de sanación desde Colombia Next Post Beyond Labels: Representing People, Not Problems »