TEL AVIV REFUGEE CLINIC - OPEN ALL YEAR

Volunteers on this program will be assisting in a health clinic in Tel Aviv founded in 2008 to provide free or heavily subsidized medical care to the growing African population there. The African population that the clinic treats is mostly from Sudan, Eritrea, and Ivory Coast, who have sought a better life in Israel for themselves and families. Many of the patients come from all over Israel seeking affordable health care because they do not legally qualify for the National Health Care coverage and cannot afford to pay out of their own pocket for the necessary medical treatment. With a recent increase in funding, the clinic has grown into a multi-faceted facility, able to address the variety of health conditions and traumas that it faces on a daily basis, from illnesses that are more prevalent in the developing world such as malaria, jaundice, and dermatological infections and wounds, to illnesses common in the western world such as diabetes and heart conditions. The clinic is divided into three main departments: emergency care, specialty clinic, and laboratory and tests. The emergency care clinic is staffed with emergency care physicians and paramedics available at all times, equipped to perform suturing, casting, foreign body removal, and administration of IV fluids. The specialty clinic is host to a variety of specialty medical care such as dermatology, ENT, orthopedics, infectious diseases, pediatrics, OB/GYN, family medicine, psychiatry, etc. The clinic is also able to perform basic laboratory tests and imaging results at a very subsidized rate for its patients, giving the doctors some of the basic tools (blood work, X-RAYs, ultrasound, EKG testing) necessary for accurate diagnosis, leading to higher quality of care.