#floating doctors

[too-t-painful]

I haven't slept in like 48 hours, I've gone from LA to Costa Rica to bocas del toro to San cristobal. I'm covered in bug bites and I haven't stopped sweating but I couldn't be happier.

[behindthefeat-blog]

“There doesn’t have to be a dock or a port where we go, there just has to be a coast, and wherever that coast is we’ll get there”. Dr. Benjamin LaBrot, founder of Floating Doctors, is referring to the accessibility that their non-profit organization has instituted in isolated developing areas in the Caribbean. He and his sister, Sky LaBrot, by way of ship, distribute donated medical supplies, and implement free acute and preventative health care, to these coastal areas.

Panama, located in Central America, is bordered by both the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, its location being one of the reasons that Floating Doctors has implemented a free ‘floating’ health care service there. Floating Doctors wishes to reduce the burden of disease on people in these developing areas, who otherwise wouldn’t be able to receive this treatment, nor be able to afford their own fully equipped hospitals.

The Southern Wind, the Floating Doctors’ boat, carries 20 working people and 11 tons of relief supplies. It is the answer to Dr. Benjamin LaBrot’s hope to provide more medical supplies than just what he had formerly been able to carry in a few backpacks.

FEAT heard about Floating Doctors through a friend, and Tufts Medical Student, Catherine Dam, who will be volunteering with the program this month. She mentioned her desire to provide the kids there with FEAT Socks, to brighten their spirits, and to keep their feet comfortable.

When I first reached out to Floating Doctor’s Sky LaBrot, Co-Founder and CEO, she was so excited to hear of our enthusiasm regarding a sock donation. She politely stopped me during my spiel to say, “It would be so great to bring socks for the people here, but its very warm year round and they just don’t really wear shoes...”. This concept quickly made sense, but we kept discussing possibilities, and she expressed a need for socks at one of their homes for elderly residents, which is run by Floating Doctors. With about 100 residents, it would be easy for FEAT to supply them with more than the necessary number of socks to keep their feet happy.

Volunteers are the backbone to Floating Doctors. While medical experience is most appreciated, they accept anyone with positive attitude, willingness to work hard, and a desire to help people. This program thrives from the selflessness of doctors, nurses, healthcare professionals, students, and goodhearted people.

With the socks shipped, we are excited to hear back from our friends at Floating Doctors. Over the next few weeks, we will definitely document Catherine’s travels to Panama, and hopefully she will return with plenty of photos and inspirational stories to share with the rest of us.

Please if you can, donate to Floating Doctors at http://floatingdoctors.com/donation/

Want an idea of what your money can do?

$5 - 30 kids with multi-vitamins for a month $25 - 10 patients seen and provided with necessary meds $50 – Provide transport to medical crew to a distant community $100 - Micro finance a surgery $2,500 – Keep floating doctors afloat for 1 month

-Bianca, Spreading Smiles

[everypersonincare]

Who have you inspired?

[everypersonincare]

"Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind."

-Bruce Lee

[everypersonincare]

If you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far go together.

Richard Branson

[newstfionline]

How a trip to Africa changed one doctor forever

By Gabriel Noble, The Upbeat, June 20, 2013

When Benjamin LaBrot was in second grade in Southern California, he told his class that when he grew up he wanted to be two things: a doctor and a marine biologist. His teacher told him he had to choose one, but he was determined to combine his love of the ocean with his desire to help people.

He started achieving his goals in junior high school, when he worked on sport and commercial fishing boats and the Marine Science Floating Laboratory vessel as a research diver. This led him to become certified as an emergency medical technician and a scuba dive buddy for divers with paraplegia, quadriplegia or blindness.

Throughout his schooling, he and his peers went on personal medical missions all over the developing world. After college he moved to Ireland and joined the global medicine program at the Royal College of Surgeons.

It was on one particular mission to Tanzania in 2006 that he truly found his calling. With a backpack full of medicine, he set up under a tree in a desolate and impoverished village in the Serengeti. A line of 50 patients formed, all of them with a variety of ailments from tuberculosis to lion wounds to common colds.

It was not long, however, before the supplies in his backpack were depleted and the line had only grown longer. Heartbroken and driven to tears by the fact that he would have to leave patients untreated, he decided then and there that he would never leave a patient untreated, no matter what the circumstance.

In 2008, the group Floating Doctors was established with the mission to bring medical relief to remote coastal communities around the world. With the realization that approximately 80 percent of the world's population lives within 5 miles of the coast and that access to the poorest communities is often best attained by waterways, the group decided to buy a 76-foot sailboat, called "The Southern Wind." LaBrot now had "a much bigger backpack" and would never run out of supplies again.

With his sister Sky LaBrot--then a Hollywood restaurant and club opener--and a handful of volunteers, they loaded "The Southern Wind" with 25,000 tons of medical supplies and set sail for their first medical mission in 2010: the coast of Haiti to respond to the cholera epidemic that resulted from the tragic earthquake. In roughly three months they facilitated 35 mobile clinics and treated 2,500 patients.

"If you can do Haiti, you can do anywhere," says LaBrot, who learned Creole during his stay to communicate with patients and build trust with the community. "So we set sail for the Bay Islands of Honduras, and then onward to Bocas Del Toro, Panama."

Since 2012 LaBrot has been in Panama, which is ideally suited for Floating Doctors as it has hundreds of small island communities that are widely dispersed and accessible only by water. These communities have no access to health care and lack the transportation infrastructure to get to a hospital during an emergency scenario. In the villages where the Floating Doctors sets up mobile clinics, LaBrot and his volunteers treat patients with tuberculosis, respiratory infections, diabetes and a variety of local tropical diseases. "Too often," he says, "it is not so much treating, as it is preventative medicine. It's the little things that make the most impact: a toothbrush, a bar of soap and a pair of glasses. "

To this day, Floating Doctors has treated approximately 20,000 patients in three countries.

A saying that LaBrot follows is, "to the world you may be just one person, but to another person, you might be the world." This is what drives him to push through physical, financial, cultural and sometimes logistical barriers to do whatever it takes to treat every patient in need.

LaBrot says many people have asked him, "Wouldn't you rather be in private practice in Southern California, making tons of money and do this relief work a couple weeks a year?" And he responds, "Why? Why would I work all year round to do what I love for a couple weeks? It will never compare to what I get out of this project every single day. Floating Doctors has changed me in ways I never anticipated, and I will do this for the rest of my life."

[wearenomadique]

On New Years Eve, Bocas del Toro looked more like the wild west. All the chinese mercados unloaded stockpiles of fireworks to line the main drag. Roman candles, smoke bombs, and exploding stars flew in all directions as torrential rain added unneeded intensity to the evening. At midnight, Bocas was a war zone, and on the morning of January 1 it was covered in wet fireworks packaging, cans of Balboa beer, and hung over Argentinean tourists. Best, Andrew Shot on a soaking wet Canon 5D Mark II, 70-200mm f2.8, 50mm f1.2, 35mm f1.4