BMA invites Humanitarian Fund applications
8 February 2013
Doctors planning humanitarian projects overseas can benefit from a BMA fund that opened for applications this week.
Grants worth a total of £20,000 are available from the association’s Humanitarian Fund this year.
Funding of up to £3,000 per project is on offer to teams of healthcare professionals to help with travel and accommodation costs.
Launching the 2013 round of funding, BMA international committee chair Terry John said: ‘I am always impressed by the fantastic work done by the doctors who apply for grants, and would encourage those looking to take part in projects in the coming year to get their applications in.’
Birmingham consultant in rehabilitation medicine Bandara Panagamuwa and consultant prosthetist Bernard Waldron visited Sri Lanka last year with the help of a BMA grant.
Substantial benefits
Dr Panagamuwa is a trustee of the Meththa Foundation UK charity, which helps provide artificial limbs to patients injured in ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka.
He said: ‘The project enabled us to visit Sri Lanka on three occasions and provide 203 modern modular artificial limbs and appliances to [patients] who would have otherwise not received this level of service…
‘The in-service training that we have undertaken and the formal training that was initiated by Mr Waldron will be continued indefinitely to ensure that the knowledge base in the workforce is kept updated.’
Dr Panagamuwa also had talks with a health minister about establishing a prosthetics unit in a central location, and introducing rehabilitation medicine as a medical specialty in Sri Lanka.