Project HOPE Volunteers Begin African Winds Mission with the Royal Dutch Navy in West Africa
Two medical volunteers from Project HOPE today are joining the Royal Dutch Navy in Ghana to contribute to African Winds 2013, a humanitarian mission along the West Coast of Africa.
Millwood, VA, September 30, 2013
Two medical volunteers from Project HOPE, a global health education and humanitarian assistance organization, today are joining the Royal Dutch Navy and local African partners in Ghana to contribute to African Winds 2013, a Royal Dutch Navy-led humanitarian mission and training exercise along the West Coast of Africa. The three-week volunteer mission will be Project HOPE’s first collaboration with the Royal Dutch Navy.
“With our wealth of experience in assisting the U.S. military with humanitarian work, our volunteers are sure to make a superb contribution to African Winds 2013,” said Matt Peterson, Project HOPE’s Senior Manager for Volunteer Operations. “We look forward to helping make this mission a success and for future collaborations with the Royal Dutch Armed Forces.”
Working alongside medical personnel from the Dutch military, the two HOPE volunteers, Alan Jamison, M.D. and Laura Deely, R.N., will conduct maternal and child health seminars aboard the Royal Netherlands Naval Vessel HNLMS Rotterdam in the port cities of Sekondi, Ghana and Cotonou, Benin.
Following the training seminars, the volunteers will participate in week-long maternal and child health medical outreach programs on land, which will include basic exams, consultations, professional health education and community outreach. The outreach efforts in Ghana will focus on community health promotion; in Benin the efforts will center on youth reproductive health and family planning.
“African Winds 2013 will be my seventh volunteer mission with Project HOPE,” said Alan Jamison, M.D., a retired pediatrician from Tennessee. “I am thrilled to have another opportunity to utilize my skills to improve the health of individuals in need in Ghana and Benin.”
African Winds 2013 will be Project HOPE’s 32nd joint humanitarian mission with a military partner. Project HOPE has contributed medical volunteers to U.S. Department of Defense humanitarian missions every year since 2005, when HOPE first supplied medical volunteers to help with the U.S. Navy’s relief efforts in Indonesia following the Indian Ocean tsunami.
Project HOPE medical volunteers participated in U.S. Navy humanitarian missions in Ghana each year from 2009-2012, with port calls in Sekondi and Tema. Project HOPE also maintains a year-round partnership for emergency medicine training at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi, Ghana. In Benin Project HOPE sent a small team of medical volunteers to Cotonou in 2012, as part of the U.S. Navy’s Africa Partnership Station mission. Project HOPE also directs ongoing health programs on the continent of Africa in Egypt, Namibia, Malawi, Mozambique and South Africa.
About Project HOPE
Founded in 1958, Project HOPE (Health Opportunities for People Everywhere) is dedicated to providing lasting solutions to health crises, with the mission of helping people to help themselves. Identifiable to many by the SS HOPE, the world’s first peacetime hospital ship, Project HOPE now conducts land-based medical training and health education programs in 35 countries across five continents. Visit our website http://www.projecthope.org and follow us on Twitter at @projecthopeorg.