Dear colleagues,
May is well and truly upon us and it’s time consider your donation to Twice the Doctor foundation for this year. You have been generous in the past and hopefully will be again. You should not lose sight of the fact that in terms of quality adjusted life years of health (QALYs) your donation of about $500 can double your yearly impact as a doctor! Hard to believe isn’t it? But less difficult to understand when considering:
- Donations go to specific, highly efficient targeted programmes in African countries where health budgets can be as little as $30 per person per annum.
- Trained nurses delivering high end medical care (including lid surgery for trachoma) are often paid about $2500 per annum.
- In Australia we routinely pay $50,000+ for medical services/ procedures and especially certain medications to deliver a single QALY.
- All administration fees for TTD are covered by the directors so your donation goes even further.
Just this week I had the pleasure to meet Dr Ciku Mathenge from Kigali, Rwanda where she is 1 of 12 ophthalmologists……. for 12 million people. (See photo attached). In Australia we have About 40 ophthalmologists per million people.
Dr Mathenge helps coordinate and advise ophthalmic programmes for East Africa supplied by one of our partners, The Fred Hollows foundation, in order to deliver the most essential and most efficient interventions for the resources available. She is also starting a programme to train more ophthalmologists via resources in her private clinic – something that has not been done before in Rwanda.
Please remember there is a whole other world of medical need out there and how very privileged we are to live and work in Australia.
Donate at twicethedoctor.org.au
Regards to all
Rob Baume
( on behalf of the directors of TTD foundation )