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Students Head To Uganda For Service Project

Local Community, Hospital Donates Medical Supplies

POSTED: 1:40 pm EST December 23, 2008
UPDATED: 6:26 pm EST December 23, 2008

He's pre-med at Vassar, and a former volunteer at a local hospital. As NewsCenter 5's Liz Brunner reported Tuesday, he's heading overseas for his next medical mission with help from his community.

Student Volunteers Head To Uganda For Service Project

Instead of wrapping presents this holiday season, Ben Crawford and Jacquie Law are busy packing donated medical supplies to take to Uganda.

"I've worked as a nurse aid before. I've worked as a transport in the hospital. I've been an EMT. But I'm going to be seeing medical cases that we will never see in the United States," said Crawford, a sophomore at Vassar College.

Crawford and Law, both pre-med students at Vassar College, are volunteers for the student run Vassar Uganda Project. Law started it in 2007.

"Our biggest project is implementing an emergency medical system," she said.

The project has partnered with different groups to provide health care to poverty stricken areas.

"CPR, first aid, disease prevention. Blood borne pathogen and personal hygiene education," Law said.

The project has received local support from Crawford's hometown of Needham. Suitcases are now packed with hundreds of various medical supplies. Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, where Crawford volunteered for years, has given a generous donation.

"That money is actually being used to educate 2,360 people in Uganda in first aid, CPR, disease prevention, and then those people generally perform first aid response clubs so communities who live like an hour away from a medical clinic and have no way of transporting themselves, they can at least have some kind of medical care," Law said.

They are dedicated students who want educate the people of Uganda one trip at a time.

"If you can go do a project like this you can really make a huge difference," Crawford said.

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