The Bicol Clinic Foundation establishes itself as a provider of medical care to underserved areas on a small scale: one village at a time. Our goal is to provide ongoing medical clinics staffed by local physicians, physician extenders, and ancillary staff; supported by funds raised through charitable donations and interlinked with American medical schools and residency training programs. We wish to forge cooperation between American medical training and third world medical problems. Funds raised will be used to help support physicians to cover their expenses for one month periods of time in order for them to practice and learn in a third world environment.
The clinic's initial location will be the Bicol region of the Philippines, with ambitions of expanding to other nations. The Bicol Clinic Foundation plans to develop through increased dqnations and charable endeavors. Our goal is to provide medical care to all those who present themselves to our doors without regards to their costs. We plan to raise funds from various pharmaceutical industries and organizations, in collaboration with local governments, in order to provide adequate ongoing care to the needy, while providing a realistic experience for American doctors-in-training who have passions to learn third world medicine, tropical medicine, and infectious diseases.
As a number of recent near epidemics and potential future epidemics have shown, our world is becoming interdependent and interlinked, therefore the imperative for American physicians to have intimate knowledge and experience related to tropical medicine, disease transmission, vector control, and preventative measures is vital. Diseases that originate elsewhere can often arrive on American shores unannounced. We therefore hope to start this clinic foundation in order to achieve these goals: 1) enhance local medical care in third world nations on a small scale, 2) provide an excellent ongoing facility for local professionals to be gainfully employed, 3) further local research in those nations in cooperation with visiting American professors, physicians, residents, and medical students in training. Although these goals sound lofty, if we approach the healthcare problem of our world village by village, solutions are obtainable through the generosity and goodwill of those here and abroad.