Our years of experience and how it has made us into the charity we are today
42 years of rule by Communist Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania ended.
Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop, travelled to Romania to see how the company could assist. She gathered a ‘Love Team’ of staff, including a seasonal factory worker – Alison Beadsworth. The ‘Romanian Relief Drive’ took vital supplies into the most remote orphanages in the north east of Romania, where hundreds of abandoned children were found living in appalling conditions. Buildings were refurbished and children enjoyed love, laughter and play.
Dr Colin Tourle was asked to head up a team of nurses to assess and address the children’s medical problems. It was the first year that a child did not die at the orphanages during the harsh Romanian winter.
Colin and Alison, with their team, took blood samples from 2,500 children in the Iasi region’s 25 orphanages to test for HIV. Those testing positive were relocated for specialist care. The programme’s best practice and results were published by Iasi University Medical School.
The Romanian Relief Drive became known as the ‘Eastern European Relief Drive’ and we were invited into Albania to share the expertise we had developed with insitutionalised children.
Alison helped to deepen and expand the work undertaken by the relief drive, culminating in the establishment of COTE as a registered charity. The close ties continue to this day.
In Korce, Albania, we were asked to assess the health of children at a home for learning and physical disabilities. This led to one of the boys having hip surgery in the UK and Albania enabling him to walk for the first time. The UK orthopaedic team, from Great Ormond Street Hospital, shared their expertise with the medics in Tirana, who have since used this knowledge for the benefit of many more Albanian children.
We were invited to take an eye team to a school for blind and partially sighted children in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Our team’s presence was advertised on local radio and many people benefitted from having eye health checks at the school. We made several visits, providing glasses and low vision aids.
15,000 refugees flooded into Korce, Albania, where we were already working with the children’s home. In partnership with other medical aid agencies, our team offered primary and emergency health care to refugee families in the local villages and camps. In Kosovo, we supported the hospital in Mitrovica, in the Serbian district of the town, providing basic medical supplies and reconditioned equipment.
The UN team we worked with in Kosovo alerted us to the medical needs of people on Atauro, a remote island off the mainland used as a place of exile and imprisonment during the Indonesian occupation. With no road network and impenetrable forest, there was no easy way of getting across the island to receive medical care at the island’s clinic. We agreed to fund a simple but bespoke boat to transport the East Timorese medical team around the island and to evacuate patients to the mainland. The ‘Spirit of Iasis’ completed her maiden voyage in 2002.
We made several trips to the Amazon in remote regions along the Xingu river, armed with basic supplies and invaluable experience in primary and emergency health care.
Our eye team made two visits to the blind school in Balti. We assessed the children’s vision and provided them with low vision aids and Braille writers.
The Body Shop Foundation assisted us in stepping out from being one of its core projects to setting up as an independent charity: Iasis Medical Registered Charity Number 1118660
A visit by Iasis ophthalmologist, Dr Daragh Fahey, to an ‘eye camp’ in Tigray province catalysed our relationship with Ethiopian ophthalmologist Dr Fitsum Bekele and the Fitsum Birhan Hospital in Mekele.
An estimated 250,000 people died with a further 300,000 injured. Over several trips to Haiti, we worked alongside doctors and nurses from US charity ‘Haiti Clinic’, bringing much needed medical assistance to Cite Soleil – the largest slum in Port au Prince.
Many people fled the Syrian Civil War, crossing over the border into the neighbouring Bekaa Valley region of Lebanon. A grassroots community church group invited us in to help provide medical support alongside Lebanese, British and US medics. We have made several trips to Lebanon to support the Syrian refugees.
The world entered lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our medics were on the NHS frontline tackling the outbreak in the UK.
Dr Alison was deployed to Ukraine in May 2022 to work in an Emergency field hospital for Samaritans Purse, an international relief charity.
International travel has gradually opened up, but the security situations in Ethiopia, Lebanon and Haiti mean that it is still not safe for us to travel to our projects.
Dr Alison is deployed with UK Med to Gaza to work in a field hospital as an emergency physician.
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Proving medical and emergency aid to people marginalised by conflict, poverty, or remote locations.