The situation in the Tibetan region is dire...

The situation surrounding medical care for many Tibetans is tragic. A great number of people can not afford basic medical checks nor the drugs required to heal. Sometimes drugs are simply not available.

ChinaHeart has a medical project amongst the Tibetan community, predominantly helping Amdo Tibetans but also Kham and Central Tibetans . Our partnership manager is a western medical scientist who has been screening students for intestinal parasites in a middle/high school in a small farming village as part of a multinational medical team.

He also trained a Tibetan medical student to perform this testing for further local work. Later, this local medical student was given a grant from the Medical College to do screening on university and college students in the city where he lives. To date 10 medical students have been trained.

Our partner has been giving lectures on Sexually Transmitted Diseases and Contraception to many local young people. We now have permissions to speak to the entire student body class by class with separate sessions for the guys and the girls. This is in a University with a large number of Tibetan students.

In all there are between 7 to 10 thousand students. We have now provided lectures to nearly all Tibetan & Mongolian students. Of course each year there is a new intake of students to teach. We have been involved in helping quite a few of the students who have STD's. Many find the drugs required either unavailable or far too expensive.

Most students here just live on noodles (as they are cheap) and many have stomach problems. When they are not just eating noodles, many of the Tibetans have diets rich in fat such as yak butter, oil and they love fatty meat. This results in many of them having gall bladder problems.

The major infectious diseases here are Tuberculosis (TB) and Hepatitis B. Most of the Tibetans have had TB as children. We have completed some lectures on TB for students to make them aware of the dangers.

So the needs are great. ChinaHeart's desire to to provide funding to increase the testing for these infectious diseases.

Our vision is to take the STD lectures into middle and high schools in county, township and village areas. To do this we'll train primarily local Tibetans to take these presentations to the more remote areas.

Our vision also includes bringing short term overseas medical teams who would work with and train local medical staff. These would include Ophthalmic surgeons who could do cataract surgery, a big problem in for Tibetans.

If these teams have specialist medical staff then it is possible to work with local doctors and hospitals to use their facilities as long as there is a training element involved. Other short term teams will hopefully go into the villages, like a mobile clinic - diagnosing, treating where practicable and referral where appropriate to other medical facilities. This would also be done in conjunction with local doctors.

Will you help bring medical aid to these Tibetan people? They don't have money for medicines and treatment. Your support will prevent and restore health to many.