From the outset we have leveraged our efforts through medical education to ultimately improve the health of the children. Since 1992, we have provided complete sponsorship of more than 20 educational visits by physicians from Romania and Bosnia. To limit expenses, these doctors have stayed in the Yourtee's home during their visits. Educational programs have been arranged with the cooperation of Boston's Children's Hospital, the Massachusetts General Hospital, Shriner’s Hospital for Crippled Children, Dartmouth Medical Center, Catholic Medical Center, and other area hospitals. We have organized volunteer help from area doctors, and have sent six of these doctors to international medical meetings of their specialty in the US.In 2007 we founded a program in cooperation with the Infectious Disease section of the University of Pennsylvania Hospital to bring doctors from Botswana to learn more about AIDS care. Nobody's Children provides financial support for this program in memory of our friend Richard K. Root, MD, who died tragically while volunteering at the Penn AIDS program in Botswana in 2007..
reidy PerezFreidy lives in a remote coastal village of Venezuela, and has been disfigured since birth by facial neurofibromatosis. He was brought to our attention by a missionary who advocated for him. Nobody's Children arranged the details of his care, housing, and transportation, all of the international paperwork, and sponsored his care in the United States.In November 2009, plastic surgeons Dr. George Chatson of North Andover and Dr. Gary Rogers of Children's Hospital Boston performed major reconstructive surgery at the Holy Family Hospital in Methuen, MA. Freidy had a successful outcome, recovered uneventfully, and he and his mother returned to Venezuela just before ThanksgivingDr. Rodrigo Diaz, a Venezuelan plastic surgeon, has been invaluable in navigating the Venezuelan bureaucracy and arranging all the local details to make this medical project take place. He accompanied Freidy and his mother to the US, acting as interpreter and medical liaison. During his stay in Windham, Dr. Diaz also had the opportunity to advance his medical education through observerships at Mass General Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Children's Hospital, and Shriners Hospital in Boston.