Doctors without borders alternatives?

[Dred Pirate]

Hey all - I am interested in doing some sort of overseas mission work. I have done some short 1 week stints, but am looking for something a little bit longer (in the terms of a few months). Unfortunately Doctors without Borders now requires their pharmacists to speak French, which, well, I don't and won't be learning anytime soon...(languages are not a strong point of mine). (FYI- I am a pharmacist and have posted that board as well, but don't expect to get much advice in this area).

In my short stints we mainly did outpatient visits, bascially putting a bandaid on a bullet hole type of sitautions - I would love to work in more of an hospital field/hospital environment. Anybody have experience with an organization to start looking into?

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[alpinism]

Your best option would be to search online for global health programs at universities and find partner universities overseas that commonly take medical and pharmacy students. Many websites will often have contact information and you can just email them asking to see if they would possibly accept having a volunteer for a short time to work and teach students.

As far as MSF each country has their own branch with their own rules but for the US you only have to speak french for francophone countries and even then its basic conversational french which can be learned after taking a few classes. That being said the biggest drawback to doing missions with them is that with a few exceptions they only offer 6 to 12 month assignments at a very short list of hospitals. Not only that but they require many people to spend time working administratively supervising the hospitals. Full disclosure though they could have completely different rules for their pharmacists and I'm only really familiar with the rules for emergency physicians.

There are other NGOs like the ICRC and IMC for example but they all generally work the same with regards to requirements but with a little more freedom to choose the exact time frame and location for volunteer work overseas. You can always send an email about potential opportunities however right now its still very difficult with all the COVID travel restrictions and many organizations have suspended their programs.

 

[gyngyn]

This thread can be followed here: Doctors without borders alternatives?