DOCTORS of the World Cyprus yesterday announced the start of a pilot programme named, ‘Adopting from Afar.’
At a news conference, the volunteer group explained that it was a sponsorship programme aimed at providing children in Zimbabwe with food, clothing, footwear, medicine and education.
The program will be run with the co-operation of several orphanages in Zimbabwe and it is hoped that it will expand to neighbouring countries in the future.
According to Cyprus co-ordinator Elena Papasavva, “Cypriots have already started to embrace the programme, with 18 applications in the first several hours alone. I am very happy to say that Cypriots are embracing what we are trying to do,” she said.
Doctors of the World Cyprus was founded in 1995 and according to Papasavva, “has worked tirelessly and objectively over the years for the good of those who are suffering via the supply of medical and humanitarian aid.”
They focus on those caught up in war, civil conflict, poverty and natural disasters.
“Have you ever thought that with only €20 a month, you can change the life and future of an orphan who is at constant risk from malnutrition, lack of clean drinking water, AIDS, malaria and a host of other problems in their daily lives?” she asked.
Doctors of the World also drew the public’s attention to a photographic exhibition called ‘Africa’, which features work by respected Cypriot photographers Marina Shacolas, Andreas Vassiliou, Pavlos Vrionides and Katia Christodoulou, taken around the African continent.
“This exhibition is a chance to promote our sponsorship programme as it gives the public an opportunity to see some of the awful conditions many children are living in,” said Papasavva.
Doctors of the World grew out of the French doctors’ movement, consisting of a small group of physicians who were no longer able to stay silent in the face of the human rights violations they were witnessing.
Out of a desire to bring help to the victims of the Biafra war of independence in Nigeria, many doctors had joined the Red Cross. In 1971, a number of them opposed the silence and neutrality required by the Red Cross and created an association with more scope to speak up and to act, Doctors without Borders.
Then, in the late 1970s, during the Vietnam boat people crisis, some of these doctors felt a ship had to be chartered with physicians and journalists in order to provide care for the boat people and to report on the human rights violations they were witnessing. The leadership of Doctors without Borders considered the operation too sensationalist and a group of 15 doctors broke away to create a new association whose mandate was to both provide care and bear witness. Doctors of the World was thus born in France in March 1980.
Since then, a number of Doctors of the World associations have been founded in Europe, North and South America and Asia.
The mandate all of these associations chose for themselves was to provide care to the most vulnerable populations and report on their situation. They are active throughout the world, through medical missions in their own countries and abroad.
For further information, call 22-452390 or 7000 9990.
