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Dear Friends,
On behalf of everyone at Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), I am writing to thank you and everyone at the Miraglo Foundation for your support and to update you on our activities in war-torn Ukraine. Contributions towards general support are vitally important, and enabled our initial response when the war began. I hope you will share this report within your Foundation to those who are interested in our programs.
More than 100 days have passed since the start of the war. Millions of Ukrainians have fled to safer regions inside the country while millions more have crossed into neighboring countries. Our teams are treating extremely vulnerable people, including young children and elderly people, who have been sheltering underground for weeks and live in constant fear. Ukrainian medical teams continue to work around the clock in incredibly difficult conditions in hospitals on or near the frontlines.
MSF is supporting Ukrainian medical staff by getting them the supplies they need, by providing training on how to manage large numbers of wounded people, and by evacuating critically-ill patients to hospitals in safer parts of the country. MSF has also expanded its activities in areas close to the frontlines and in places hosting displaced people. About 140 international staff and 470 Ukrainian staff are working at 15 locations across Ukraine.
Delivering supplies: Since the outbreak of fighting, MSF teams have distributed 882 tons of medicines and supplies in a race against time to get them to hospitals that are running out. We have distributed fleece blankets, sleeping bags, warm clothes, and hygiene items to people who have fled their homes.
Mass casualty training and burn care: An experienced MSF surgical team is traveling from hospital to hospital to train surgeons in mass casualty triage and other core essentials of war surgery. We recently launched a project to assist the burn unit at a major hospital in Lviv.
Evacuating patients by hospital train: Our teams are going to great lengths to evacuate patients from hospitals near war zones to those in safer regions. MSF has outfitted two trains with hospital wards, one of which has an intensive care unit, a car that generates oxygen for critically-ill patients, and a generator to power the medical devices needed to monitor patients. So far, we have completed 24 medical evacuations using the trains, transporting 653 patients, their family members, and 78 orphans to safety.
Medical care in and around Kyiv: In Kyiv, we are caring for more than 1,000 patients with non-communicable diseases, mainly elderly and other vulnerable individuals. Volunteers are helping us deliver medications to patients’ homes. In Hostomel, on the outskirts of Kyiv, our teams worked alongside Ukrainian doctors to restart medical care in a community devastated by weeks of intensive fighting. Even after the Russian forces left, people were initially too scared to leave their basements. Mobile clinics, emergency medical consultations, and referrals are now functioning again.
Mobile clinics: MSF is dispatching mobile teams to provide medical and psychological care to displaced people living in more than 70 shelters in and around Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia. Each mobile clinic team, made up of a doctor, nurse, psychologist and health educator, is carrying out an average of 60 consultations each day. MSF psychologists are providing individual and group sessions for adults and children and running trainings for Ukrainian first responders.
Assisting refugees: While most of our programs are based inside Ukraine, we are running clinics at border crossings, donating medical supplies, and training local groups to provide mental health support to refugees arriving in Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Slovakia, Belarus, and Russia.
Neglected crises: Understandably, the world’s attention has focused on the war in Ukraine. Yet other serious crises are quietly unfolding away from the spotlight. Right now, MSF teams, with your support, are delivering urgent medical care, humanitarian aid, and clean water to hundreds of thousands of people caught in some of the world’s worst emergencies.
Soaring food prices — caused in part by Ukraine’s inability to export grain — along with climate shocks, conflict, and displacement are making it exceedingly difficult for many families to feed their children. Adding to people’s difficulties, protracted conflicts continue, humanitarian funding has been cut significantly and redirected to Ukraine, and droughts and unusually high temperatures are causing a global fall in crop yields.
Our teams are already treating increasing numbers of malnourished children at projects in Afghanistan, Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen. We fear that the worst is yet to come, and MSF is preparing for additional nutritional crises by purchasing and storing the medicines, therapeutic food, and other supplies needed to treat large numbers of malnourished children.
Your support is making this work possible. Thank you for your generous commitment to MSF and helping us uphold our principles to deliver impartial medical relief wherever it is needed most. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at 212-655-3769 or alaina.deans@newyork.msf.org.
Kind regards,
Alaina Deans
Development Officer, Foundations
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)
AIHM Conference
October 24-27
Who should attend the AIHM Conference?
Primary care providers, nursing professionals, pharmacy professionals, members of health institutions and practitioners across the spectrum of conventional and integrative providers. Come discover how conventional medicine and integrative health are uniting to create a Whole Health model for enhancing care and optimizing results within your scope of practice.
Member Registration
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Come share and experience how you can bring Whole Health to life. We will explore how Whole Health is becoming the next evolutionary step for integrative health and medicine. Learn how you, as an integrative healthcare professional, can transform yourself, your practice or workplace, and the health care system towards whole person health.
A Gift from Miraglo for International Healthcare Providers: AIHM 2020 Conference & Membership
Dear International Colleagues,
Throughout our travels and conferences, we have had the pleasure of meeting you and connecting. Due to the pandemic and limited travel, our annual Academy of Integrative Health & Medicine (AIHM) conference, People, Planet, Purpose October 9 to 11, 2020 is now virtual. We are happy to announce that a generous gift from the Taylor Family Foundation to our Miraglo Foundation,www.miraglofoundation.org, has made this conference available to all international healthcare practitioners, free of charge. READ MORE
Book Launch: Health of People, Health of Planet and Our Responsibility
The Pontifical Academy of Sciences recently hosted a 2-hour virtual event to mark Springer’s open access publication of Health of People, Health of Planet, Our Responsibility.
This book resulted from the Pontifical Academy of Sciences 2017 workshop of the same name at the Vatican. The workshop was funded by UC San Diego Institute of Public Health, The World Health Organization, and The Miraglo Foundation. Speakers included climate and air pollution scientists, policy makers, faith leaders, politicians, Nobel laureates and physicians, including Miraglo treasurer, Mimi Guarneri, MD. Speakers addressed how climate change, if left unchecked, can become a human tragedy of immeasurable proportions, particularly to the poorest three billion people in the world.
As we are now learning from the global response to COVID-19, a refocus of climate change in terms of human health impacts may bring in massive public support for climate actions.
A Message from Rauni: Enlightening Ourselves at Summer Solstice, Juneteenth and Father’s Day 2020
In my native Finland, Summer Solstice—the longest day of the year and it is really long, the sun does not go down at all above the Arctic Circle —is considered the second most important holiday behind Christmas. We go to nature, cabins, boat, gather, and build bonfires. Legend says that on midsummer night any young woman who puts seven wildflowers under her pillow will dream of her future fiance. This celebration of the longest day of the year or Summer Solstice is an ancient practice in many different cultures. It is a celebration and connection to the light. In the spiritual tradition, we know that light always overcomes darkness.
Get Miraglo Founder Rauni Prittinen King’s Daily Affirmations in Your Inbox Every Morning
For many of us, it feels that our life is out of control. We face bad news, financial challenges and a pandemic that has no clear end point. It has forced us to stop and take note of how we live our lives and what truly matters.
How do we stay grounded and feel more powerful, despite all that is going on around us? This is a time to take care of ourselves first, before taking care of others—even when we are caregivers. How do we stay calm and strong when all this chaos is around us and in the world? I felt a daily affirmation could help.
Miraglo Supports: Sri Narayani Hospital & Research Center
In 2016, Miraglo Foundation provided the seed money to establish a new cardiac catheterization laboratory and open heart surgery suite at Sri Narayani Hospital and Research Centre in Tamil Nadu, India. In addition to these initial funds, Miraglo drove fundraising efforts to bring in even more much needed support. Recently, Miraglo provided funding for Sri Narayani Hospital’s two new ventilators, critical equipment for treating those suffering from Covid-19.
Miraglo Supports: Green Sakthi
Every year, The Miraglo Foundation supports non-profit environmental program Green Sakthi with a generous gift. Green Sakthi grows and plants trees, manages 2 tons of waste each day, and educates local school children on environmental sustainability. In 2020, Miraglo is supporting Green Sakthi’s solar kitchens. Read more about how these solar kitchens prevent air pollution, deforestation, and hunger while providing 5,000 free meals to the community each day.
Vatican Summit on Climate and Health
In November of 2017, Miraglo, along with UCSD and others, co-sponsored a health and climate summit at the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Science. Attendees of the summit were Nobel laureates, scientists, politicians, religious leaders, politicians, and healthcare providers, including Mimi Guarneri, MD and Rauni Prittinen King RN, MIH from Miraglo Foundation. Read the declaration and list of signatories here. READ MORE
San Diego Woman Magazine’s Women of Distinction Articles
Rauni Prittinen King RN and Dr. Mimi Guarneri, Co-Founders of Miraglo Foundation are featured in San Diego Woman Magazine’s 10th Anniversary Issue as a Women of Distinction. READ MORE
Advancing Heart Care in Southern India
The Miraglo Foundation is pleased to announce its support of the Sri Narayani Hospital & Research Centre www.snhrc.org in rural Southern India, specifically, the build out of a Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory and an Open Heart Surgery Suite. READ MORE
Epic Portable Microscope is helping restore eyesight
Miraglo Foundation’s grant to iSight Missions for the Epic Portable Microscope is helping restore eyesight to those underserved worldwide. READ MORE
Coming of the Light: The 2015 Integrator Top 10 for Policy and Action in Integrative Health and Medicine
The Biofield Science initiative, co-sponsored by MIRAGLO FOUNDATION, and the resulting Special Issue on Biofield Science by Global Advances in Health and Medicine, are recognized in Huffington Post, December 24, 2015. READ MORE