- Last year, the caravan travelled through 12 villages from 10 counties across the country
- Cardiovascular diseases are most common affections among villagers examined by the caravan’s doctors
Bucharest, February 7, 2018 – a total of 1,000 villagers across the country were seen by doctors involved in the “Doctors’ Caravan” project, whereby teams made up of approximately 30 doctors and students from the medical school travel each month through villages across the country to see and treat countryside people, who are deprived of access to proper medical investigations and healthcare services. The project is the initiative of the Doctors’ Caravan Association and has been supported by the Vodafone Romania Foundation since 2016, with Vodafone Foundation’s contribution totaling over 350,000 lei so far, out of which almost 180,000 lei were allocated to the 2017 project stage. Currently, the team of the Doctors’ Caravan Association is made up of over 800 active volunteer doctors and medicine students.
Last year, the Doctors’ Caravan travelled to 12 rural localities from 10 counties – Alba, Arges, Bihor, Botosani, Cluj, Iasi, Mures, Prahova, Teleorman Vaslui and Bucharest, providing more than 1,400 medical tests, checkups and thorough medical investigations consisting of humoral immunity tests, ultrasounds and internal medicine consultations covering cardiology, pediatrics, dentistry and ophthalmology specialties.
The year 2017 was also the startup year for the first aid courses delivered by the Doctors’ Caravan Association to school and college students. Late last year, first aid courses were organized in various schools in Bucharest and Cluj-Napoca, as a first step in a wide campaign dedicated to advocating issues such as the importance of healthy nutrition, the health risks caused by smoking and alcohol abuse and the role of sexual education in young people.
Since the beginning of the project, in 2014, the Association has reached over 4,000 direct recipients from remote rural communities, providing them with free medical services. The most common diseases in the people examined during field visits were cardiovascular diseases, with over 30% of the people seen by the caravan doctors suffering from high blood pressure, commonly known to be associated with the risk of heart failure and stroke.
The Doctors’ Caravan Association is a non-governmental organization set up in 2014 by five resident doctors with the scope of providing free medical services to people living in socially and economically underprivileged areas. Until now, the team of caravan doctors has established three caravan centers in Bucharest, Iasi and Cluj, with over 800 active volunteer doctors and medicine student participating actively in the activities carried out by the Association. More details about Doctors’ Caravan are available at http://jurnaldebine.fundatia-vodafone.ro.
The Vodafone Romania Foundation is a Romanian nongovernmental charitable organization, established in 1998, which operates separately and independently from the Vodafone Romania SA company’s business. During its 20 years of activity, Vodafone Romania Foundation has funded 1,104 programs run by 706 NGOs throughout the country, in the fields of healthcare, education and social services. These projects had a total of 2.7 million beneficiaries – children, young and old people and physically, socially or economically disadvantaged people. So far, Vodafone Romania has invested over 28 million euros in projects run by nonprofit partner organizations. More details about the Foundation’s programs are available at fundatia-vodafone.ro, http://jurnaldebine.fundatia-vodafone.ro/and www.facebook.com/fundatiavodafone.
