Nurse Grace

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Grace Chimene Pediatric Nurse Practitioner. I am interested in the health and safety of children. BSN RN University of Texas School of Nursing 1983 MSN University of Texas Medical Branch Pediatric Nurse Practitioner 1987

Friday, April 18, 2014

Global HELP for Cerebral Palsy

My daughter, who is interested in medicine, grew up with medical magazines lying about the house. While other families had magazines with pretty photos of beautiful living rooms or pretty clothes.  My coffee tables had magazines with oozing sores and gross rashes. Instead of a 10 questions about relationships, our home had guess the rash questionnaires. When we would go on vacation I would insist on going to the Leper museum in Norway or the Old Medical Theater in London to view the old medical instruments.

 My daughter went to Ghana over Spring Break, with Projects Abroad,  to get some practical experience providing health care.  She ended up cleaning sores and changing bandages at a leper facility.  She had a great time.  That is what happens when you expose your child to medical magazines strewn about the house instead of Southern Living magazine.  If I had subscribed to House Beautiful magazine do you think she would have been an interior designer?

Here in the U.S. we tend to think we have the best medical care in the world.  Or at least that is what I see on the news.  Finding medical information is sometimes difficult.  Many publications and articles require a subscription.  This must be even more difficult if you are a provider in a third world country.
  
I have discovered a wonderful website named Global Help whose mission is:

"The Global-HELP Organization, commonly referred to as HELP (Health Education using Low-cost Publications), provides free health-care information to developing countries and is committed to making medical knowledge accessible worldwide. Thanks to advances in software and communication, we can now make these publications available to places and people throughout the world. HELP is a humanitarian organization that is non-political and values racial, cultural, and religious diversity."

The Global HELP web site was developed by Drs. Lynn and Lana Staheli after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to help disseminate free medical information to third world countries and to improve the health care of people around the world.


Global HELP has a wonderful PDF on Cerebral Palsy with lots of photos and descriptions of care.  Take a look over their selection of medical videos.

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