From York to Laos ... with love ... a medical mission trip ... the first American doctors the Laotian government ever authorized to function in the Asian nation.

In 2005, Shana Griffin and the other members of the New Orleans Women's Health and Justice Initiative thought it would be easy to raise money for a women's health clinic post-Katrina. The devastated city--with few cops, lots of strangers, staggering crime, and limited care--was far from an ideally safe environment for women. "But we got a reality check," she says; donations were far from pouring in...

Mar 11, 2007 — The York County Medical Foundation wants to start a fund to repair children's smiles in Laos.

In November and early December, 12 doctors and nurses, most from York County, and one trip administrator, traveled on the foundation's first international trip. They went to the landlocked country slightly larger than Utah, which is one of the poorest in Southeast Asia.

MORE than thirty patients received a new lease of life last week following cleft-lip and palate surgery and laparoscopy procedures thanks to an American medical organisation. Thirteen doctors from the
York County Medical Foundation from the US worked with the surgery team from Mahosot Hospital to perform surgery on 15 patients with cleft lips or palates.

When a powerful tsunami devastated coastal regions of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand on December 26, 2004, the disaster killed 30,000 in Sri Lanka, alone, and left 640,000 homeless there...

Dr. Vasudevan Tiruchelvam will travel to Sri Lanka soon to create a bridge between South East Asia and York County. The doctor said he doesn’t know how he will react when he sees what the late December tsunami did to his native country. He’s heard terrible stories.

Segundo Apolonio Chicaiza-Tixi doesn’t remember what he had for lunch in York Hospital about two weeks ago. But he devoured it. He ate so quickly that he got stomach cramps.

The 23-year old man from Riobamba, a little town in the mountains of Ecuador, won’t forget the first time he had been able to eat normally since mid-November. On April 29, doctors at York Hospital removed his scarred esophagus, the muscular canal that drops from the throat to the stomach.

Jonatan Fuentes clutched a teddy bear, arms folded around the stuffed animal in miniature York Hospital scrubs. He wasn’t nervous. The 10-year old, wrapped in a white hospital sheet, awaited another operation that would help him become socially accepted when he returns to Honduras. Before his surgery at York Hospital he wasn’t able to sit on the toilet like other kids. He was born without an anus.