Doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals give up a Saturday to perform free surgeries

Image: 10News.com

Last weekend in San Diego, over 150 doctors, nurses, anesthesiologists, and other medical professionals volunteered to perform free medical procedures from biopsies to repairing hernias to gallbladder removals on patients who needed surgery but have no insurance. Project Access San Diego organized this event with Kaiser Permanente, in addition to other such events, providing free specialty medical care to over 550 patients since December 2008. Several hospitals and over 400 volunteers have participated in Project Access San Diego, doing what they can to bring healing to those who cannot afford today's high cost of medical care.. 

Image: Wikipedia

If we should deal out justice only, in this world, who would escape?  No, it is better to be generous, and in the end more profitable, for it gains gratitude for us, and love. - Mark Twain

Community workshop in Norwich, England, helps build relationships through building bikes

Image: Norwich Evening News 24

It's Not About the Bike, a community workshop organized by Sarah Smith, brings socially isolated people together through learning to build and ride bikes. It's run by users, community workers from Norwich City Council, and volunteers who offer classes and work experience, and take people on organized rides through the city, including disabled people on specially built bikes. Their goal is to offer a practical yet fun way of getting people out and about, and ready to rebuild their work and social lives.

USDA program commits to feeding about 400,000 kids in Afghanistan and Haiti

The McGovern-Dole Program is administered by USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service, which has fed over  22 million children since 2002, just announced that they will be sending 11,000 tons of rice, vegetable oil, yellow peas and lentils to feed hungry children in Afghanistan and Haiti. The program was founded to 'promote education, child development, and food security for some of the world’s poorest children. It provides for donations of U.S. agricultural products, as well as financial and technical assistance, for school feeding and maternal and child nutrition projects in low-income countries'. Hey, here's a good chunk of our tax money being very well spent!

Image: USDA Foreign Agricultural Service

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A team of health care professionals teach people to avoid and treat disease

Image: The Rotary Foundation

Members of Rotary International based in Pennsylvania have traveled to Ghana, training local health care professionals in the prevention and treatment of such diseases as lymphatic filariasis, diabetes, and leprosy.  
The training includes proper nutrition, causes of disease, self-care, and obtaining and using therapeutic devices and medicines. 


The Rotary Foundation allocated $46,340 for the trip to Accra, and sent eight health care professionals from around the world. They are devising a manual that they can leave behind to help future prevention and treatment efforts as well.

Scientists gain new understanding as to why deaf people often have extraordinary visual acuity

Image: Cerebral Systems Laboratory

A research team led by Stephen Lomber at the Center of Brain and Mind, University of Western Ontario, discovered more about how the human brain adapts for deafness. They used cats in the study, which is the only other animal besides humans that are born deaf, and found that part of the brain normally dedicated to detecting peripheral sound rededicates itself to pick up peripheral motion instead.

“The brain wants to compensate for the lost sense with enhancements that are beneficial. For example, if you’re deaf, you would benefit by seeing a car coming far off in your peripheral vision, because you can’t hear that car approaching from the side; the same with being able to more accurately detect how fast something is moving,” says Lomber. “The brain is very efficient, and doesn’t let unused space go to waste.”


Lomber is looking into whether this same adaptation occurs in people who were born hearing and became deaf later as well.

Man turns his own speech disorder into a opportunity to help others like himself

Image: University News, Appalachian State University

Many people who have speech disorders are bullied as children, become reclusive and shy, and settle for jobs they don't like because of speech disorders.

One of these, a former journalism hopeful, turned his stutter into motivation to help others like himself overcome these obstacles. Joe Klein decided to pursue a career studying speech and language disorders, trying to better understand symptoms and causes, and to develop new techniques for treatment, based on his own experience. Stuttering, like many other speech disorders, is not well understood; it is difficult to treat or to overcome on one's own, and can greatly impact the social life and job prospects of sufferers. As assistant professor, he now helps to train speech-language pathologists at Appalachian State University.