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WiRED International Previews 2014

BY ALLISON KOZICHAROW; EDITED BY BERNICE BORN

iRED began 2014 with an exciting lineup of programs designed to advance our health training activities worldwide.

Our medical writers, editors and outside consultants will continue expanding and updating WiRED’s extensive Community Health Information (CHI) e-library. Translators, meanwhile, will continue converting modules into languages including Spanish, Arabic, Armenian and Mandarin. We will increase our Facebook outreach efforts and our use of videos and blogs to help people follow WiRED’s health training programs in underserved regions. Also we will continue to partner with the Peace Corps, Caritas International and other organizations that serve isolated communities around the globe.

In 2014 WiRED will supply Peace Corps offices in several developing regions, including Africa and Central Asia, with community health training packages. This project will enable our community health outreach program to benefit more people in remote communities than ever before. With laptops, projectors and e-libraries of interactive health courses, Peace Corps workers can hold training programs at schools, town meetings and other gatherings to teach about illness prevention and treatment.

As with the Peace Corps, WiRED will partner with Caritas International to outfit several of their clinics with our community health training packages in India, South Africa, Nicaragua and elsewhere.

Peruvian Amazon. Click image to enlarge.

In January and February WiRED will widen our work in the Peruvian Amazon by providing two new CHI facilities along with a training package. Because the region is remote and entirely off the power grid, one system will require solar equipment, which we will supply. WiRED will pay for this project from individual donations and partner again with Project Amazonas and the Polus Center. In addition we will offer community health outreach programs in several locations in Nicaragua and Honduras.

This year WiRED will build on the work started last year in Armenia by testing community health outreach work in five locations within the country. Furthermore we plan to translate 25 modules into Armenian.

2014 marks our 11^th year of operation in Kenya, where we will continue our community health outreach programs, certificate programs and CHI facilities.

As WiRED broadens its work globally, we plan to create new opportunities to make information and training available to healthcare professionals who serve needy communities. For example, with funding from Medtronic Philanthropy and in coordination with medical professionals in Australia and the United Kingdom, WiRED will roll out a major training program on the echocardiographic diagnoses of rheumatic heart disease (RHD). Developed by pediatric cardiologists in coordination with WiRED, the program’s purpose is to train primary care physicians and nurses on the understanding of RHD in children. Although new portable ultrasound equipment is more affordable and available in developing regions, most countries have few if any cardiologists, so primary care physicians usually must deal with RHD on their own. Most have not been trained in echocardiography; our program will give doctors and nurses the skills to use the new equipment and save lives.

WiRED Board Chair Anthony Hodge said, “We plan to follow up on our successes of last year and make 2014 an even better year as WiRED continues its mission to bring healthcare education to underserved communities worldwide."

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