Project HOPE

The Hospital ship SS Hope

Project HOPE (Health Opportunities for People Everywhere) is an international health care organization founded in the United States in 1958. Its most visible project was the SS HOPE, the first peacetime hospital ship (converted from the USS Consolation (AH-15)). The SS HOPE was retired in 1974, after sailing to Indonesia, South Vietnam, Peru, Ecuador, Guinea, Nicaragua, Colombia, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Tunisia, Jamaica, and Brazil. On these voyages doctors, nurses, and technical staff provided medical care and training to people in each country visited.

The SS HOPE was not replaced, and emphasis switched entirely to land-based operations. Today there are organizations in Germany and the United Kingdom, in addition to the original organization in the United States. Project HOPE helps different developing countries in efforts to eradicate infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. They also help educate parents on how to prevent and treat diseases for their children and themselves, and also train health professionals. Project HOPE also sets up village health banks, which give small loans to women so they can improve their health and family's health. The village health banks also educate women on health.

Project HOPE is headquartered at Carter Hall in Millwood, Virginia.

Mission

Project HOPE works to achieve sustainable advances in health care around the world by implementing health education programs and providing humanitarian assistance in areas of need. Project HOPE is unique among international organizations in that we have always worked across the health spectrum in a wide variety of settings, from the family and community levels to the tertiary care level, training traditional birth attendants and community health volunteers where resources are limited and cardiac surgeons and biomedical engineers where technology is appropriate. Project HOPE addresses infectious diseases, health professional education, women's and children's health, humanitarian assistance, and the need for health systems and facilities.^[1]

Sites

Project HOPE has programs in the following countries:

Recent events

• 2005 — When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, HOPE sent volunteer medical response teams to the area, where they provided nursing care to people in need.
• 2006 — HOPE continues to provide aid to the people on the Gulf Coast who were hit by Hurricane Katrina. In the spring of 2006, they helped staff the U.S. Navy hospital ship, known as the Mercy, with volunteer physicians and nurses to South Asia.
• 2008 — Project HOPE's Chief Operations Officer, C. William Fox Jr., BG, USA (Ret.), was injured by an IED in Basra where the organization was assisting in building a new Children's Hospital.^[3]
• 2010 — In response to the January earthquake in Haiti, Project HOPE helped to coordinate volunteer medical staffers to fill out the complement of the USNS Comfort.^[4]

See also

• Mercy Ships

External links

• Project HOPE web page
• Project HOPE: Forty Years of American Medicine Abroad
• Parade Magazine article
• Charity Navigator Profile of Project HOPE

References