Last December, I had the pleasure, on my way back from India, to spend few days in Bangladesh on the field with the Friendship team.
It was a great opportunity to learn more about their projects and to visit the hospital boat. I was impressed by Runa Khan’s (Founder and President of Friendship) achievements and by the medical care given to isolated populations thanks to the hospital boat.
I had the pleasure to meet the famous Indian poet: Sudeep Sen.
Ahimsa Fund is very honoured to start a new partnership with Friendship and more specifically with Runa and her team, and looks forward to collaborating to this initiative and developing great projects together. See you Runa and Sudeep to the next Ahimsa Forum in June 2017!
To share with you the work of this great organization, please read the article below:
Get on Board Rongdhonu Friendship Hospital
I invite you to discover our “Get on Board!” campaign, designed to allow the former Rainbow Warrior II to pursue its second life as the Rongdhonu Friendship Hospital.
Six years ago, we all worked together to gather the seed money to enable Friendship to accept Greenpeace International’s generous gift of the Rainbow Warrior II, and to convert it into a hospital ship to serve the most deprived citizens of the coastal regions of the Bay of Bengal. Our work was not in vain: in early 2013, the Rongdhonu Friendship Hospital began sailing on its now regular routes along the southern coasts of Bangladesh.
Almost four years later, more than 165,000 patients have been treated on board the Rongdhonu Friendship Hospital, thanks to a permanent medical and paramedical team and more than 70 medical camps held by specialised doctors from all over the world. In the working areas of this, its 3rd floating hospital, Friendship also established a parallel network of basic healthcare, which currently provides services to about 50,000 people every month, overall 600,000 services rendered per year.
To allow the Rongdhonu Friendship Hospital to continue its good work, Friendship now needs to raise 650,000 EUR! That certainly seems a lot! And yet, not so much either! The hospital has hosted 54,852 patients over the past twelve years. That amounts to only 12 EUR per patient, all included! As I said, it’s not so much…
For more information, photos and films on Rongdhonu Friendship Hospital, see here.
