How far from your home is your doctor’s office? What about the nearest drug store?
If you asked Deborah Nyanduk these questions, her answers might change from week to week and month to month.
For Deborah, a mother of nine who lives in South Sudan, "home" is wherever there is food and relative peace. She doesn't have a permanent address; when another round of violence breaks out, Deborah and her neighbors pack up their families and flee to safety.
There are millions of neighbors like Deborah who are living their lives on the run today. Some of them live in camps, which are often far from civilization to avoid attracting attention. Others are forced to keep moving, because staying in one place means risking attack or running out of supplies.
Too many of these children, women and men die because there are no doctors nearby when they need medical care.
You bring care to the hardest to reach
Although refugees are far from home, your kindness ensures they are never out of reach. Thank you for ensuring mobile health clinics can bring lifesaving health care directly to families no matter where they are.
In South Sudan, clinics are set up in tents that can be packed up to follow communities like Deborah’s when they relocate. In this way, vulnerable families — and especially young children and pregnant women — never have to choose between their health and their safety.
In Yemen, a long civil war has forced families into remote desert camps. In addition to providing food and clean water, you also ensure more than a thousand people a month receive lifesaving care through mobile clinics in trucks that travel between camps.
In Ukraine, mobile clinics in motorized trailers serve families who have become strangers in their own country as war rages around them. The hospitals that remain open face severe shortages of staff and supplies, so you are ensuring these sisters and brothers have access to essential services they need to stay alive and healthy.
Thank you for being a refuge to families on the run — and for being a caring neighbor to those who are far from home … Until your love reaches every neighbor.