Projects
The Surmang Foundation provides free, high-quality medical and midwife services in the remote Surmang region of Qinghai, China.
Primary Care
Surmang Foundation's primary clinic has treated more than 70,000 patients for free in the past 11-years. Since its beginnings in 1992, as a seasonal clinic staffed by volunteer foreign doctors, the project has evolved into a brick-and-mortars healthcare center with two local, resident Tibetan doctors - Phuntsok Dongdrup and Sonam Drogha.
- Treat more than 40 patients daily.
- Per patient cost of little more than $5, including medicines.
- Administer lifesaving vaccines for polio, tetanus, and other diseases.
- Regional - Treat patients from Surmang, across the river in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), and from neighboring valleys.
Click here for more information on our primary care program and clinic.
Mother and Child Health
Women and children in Surmang and rural China suffer from higher rates of disease and debilitating injuries, greater malnutrition, and lead much shorter lives than most men. Their low social status and extreme poverty means that they have little access to vital services, even when they do exist.
To address this growing health crisis, SF began piloting a Community Healthy Worker (CHW) program in 2005. The project is a grassroots solution to promoting access to services and to creating a corps of people who represent a proactive approach to health promotion among the rural poor.
- KAP Assessment - Surveyed 400 nomadic women on health-related concerns and knowledge.
- Trained and empowered 40 local women to provide basic midwife services.
- Serve as link between our clinic and the nomadic population, attending births, referring patients and promoting health.
- Birthing Kits - Designed for use by our CHW's to create safe birthing environments, including soap, sterile gloves, gauze, and razor, etc.
- Developed pictographic training and educational literature for us by CHWs.
Click here for more information about our CHW program.
Provider Training
When rural healthcare is available, the quality of care is often so low as to make the services almost worthless. Enhancing the quality of services is as important as increasing access to those services in any approach to rural healthcare. Surmang Foundation doctors and CHW's receive continuous training:
- Off-site training - SF's two resident doctors rotate annually to Beijing for training at Peking and Tsinghua university medical centers.
- Resident Training - Practical instruction with volunteer doctors during the summer.
- Distance-training - Satellite-supported distance education and remote diagnosis with partner institutions in Beijing throughout the year.
- Online database of Tibetan and Chinese-language health materials.
Click here for more information on our provider-training efforts.
Gender Equality
Premature mortality is the ultimate form of gender inequality. Women and children are entitled to the same chances for a healthy life as men. They cannot realize this entitlement when poverty and low social status limits their access to vital health services, even when they exist.
Improving gender equality is not a specific project of the Surmang Foundation, but rather a positive outcome of our combined efforts to provide medical care and promote health. Increasing access to services and improving wellbeing is at once a focus on both mother and child health and on gender equality.
- KAP Assessment - Survey of 400 nomadic women has focused SF's attention on improving mother and child health.
- Developed a community health worker (CHW) program to provide a grassroots solution to increasing access to services and improving mother and child health.
- CHW and SF clinic programs are greatly reducing maternal and infant mortality in the Surmang region.
- Actively encouraging local women to participate in the management of SF's health promotion programs, giving them a stake in their own healthcare.
Click here for more information about our CHW project and gender equality.