There is no medical school yet in Vanuatu. Thus, there is a great shortage of fully-trained niVan (a "niVan" or "niVanuatu" is a person born in Vanuatu) physicians. Only a few of them work in the main urban areas, whereas none of the rural areas where 2/3 of the population lives have any niVan physicians at all.
The cost of sending students to the University of the South Pacific (USP) Medical School in Suva, Fiji, or to other foreign medical schools, is out of reach for niVan families and there are only a handful of government-sponsored scholarships available.
Donate-a-Doctor, established and coordinated by George & Peggy Kornreich, two of Project MARC's earliest volunteers, pays for tuition, living and travel costs of highly talented and motivated niVan medical students who would otherwise be unable to go to medical school.
Fellowship recipients commit themselves to work assignments in remote rural areas for minimally 5 years after finishing their training.
There are 2 ways you can send your contributions to Donate-a-Doctor:
DONATE ONLINE BY CREDIT CARD: | |
MAIL YOUR CONTRIBUTION BY CHECK OR CREDIT CARD: | |
| Donation Form Portable Document Format (PDF) | Donation Form Rich Text Format (RTF) |
| We recommend that you try the PDF form first. In case you have trouble with that, please try the RTF version instead. | |
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Project MARC is a nonprofit organization that is 100 % volunteer-operated and has no salaried employees. Volunteers pay for their own travel expenses while donating their time.
Thus, your donation goes directly to our assistance programs, designed to help Vanuatu's remote island communities regain their self-sufficiency.