Over the last 27 years, AHD has grown from a small storefront clinic in Ecuador’s countryside into two innovative,
largely self-sustaining, state-of-the-art teaching hospitals, a medical residency program to train local doctors, an indexed medical journal, and a research institute. For years we explored how we could use our accumulated experience to significantly expand AHD’s impact. We are excited to announce a bold plan that we are calling Campaign Cotopaxi. This initiative will:
- Dramatically increase our capacity to provide health care services in Ecuador by building a new hospital in Cotopaxi province
- Reinvigorate and broaden our training program beyond training family medicine doctors to include nurses, lab techs and hospital administrators
- Partner with universities in Ecuador and the US to expand research activities
- Work with like minded institutions across the Global South to support the often neglected role of the rural hospital in low- and middle-income countries
- Participate in a global movement and national pilot project to improve the delivery of surgical services to rural communities.
The cornerstone of this expanded vision is a new 42-bed teaching hospital in the long-neglected Cotopaxi Province. The hospital will offer services such as critical care for adults and newborns, high-risk obstetrics for pregnant moms and infants with complications, surgical specialties like orthopedics, urology, neurosurgery, hemodialysis for patients with kidney failure, and other services so difficult to find in the countryside. The Cotopaxi Province of Ecuador, with its half million, largely indigenous population, sits in the heart of the Ecuadorian highlands. Although a beautiful province, it is among the poorest in the country with many unmet healthcare needs – the kind of services that AHD has been providing for years.
This is an ambitious campaign that will need $11 million in funding over the next 3 years. This funding will cover the cost of construction and start up operations of the new hospital as well as continuing our existing services. Thank you for embarking with us on this bold, expanded plan for the future.
