The first non-governmental organisation (NGO) in the field of healthcare to be officially recognised in Italy, Doctors with Africa Cuamm is the largest italian body working to improve and safeguard the health of African populations.
The organisation’s projects have long-term goals, even when facing emergency situations, providing quality healthcare services which are open to everyone. It is committed to training and to spreading scientific knowledge through its technical contributions to healthcare projects.
Among the public institutions involved and the general public, it extols the value of solidarity and cooperation between populations.
WHAT THEY DO
In Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda, Doctors with Africa Cuamm runs projects developed in conjunction with local bodies and performed in hospitals and other structures, predominantly in rural areas. The projects undertaken are strongly integrated with the healthcare culture and social tissue of the country, through a continuing dialogue with the local public authorities and religious institutions.
In each of these countries, projects aimed at specific areas (training, mother-and-child-care, disabilities etc), as well as so-called ‘vertical operations’ intended to provide direct intervention against the great pandemics (AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria) are supported by a broad range of well-established long-term programmes.
Programmes implemented in war-torn areas, or where humanitarian emergencies exist, which have only recently become part of the body’s operating environment, aim at the effective co-ordination of projects aimed at providing immediate assistance with longer term programmes.
Currently Doctors with Africa CUAMM has 32 principal projects, 85 field operators and numerous support initiatives, and is actively present in 20 hospitals and 14 public health care districts, and is involved in mother-and-child care, the fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria; the organisation is also represented in six nursing schools and two universities.
It is a daily commitment, low profile but continuous, which aims at training people and reinforcing local institutions.
Doctors with Africa Cuamm is a story of cooperation among living people; it doesn’t ask for charity, only for justice and solidarity.
