Medical Volunteer Opportunities
Helping Canadian Health Professionals Help Others
Subscribe to Volunteer Alerts
Mercy Ships is a faith-based charity that is crewed by volunteers from all over the world, committed to bringing hope and healing. Volunteers from around the world providing free, safe surgical care, freeing people from conditions that have been burdening them for years, while training local professionals in their specialties. For over 40 years, Mercy Ships has offered healing and restoration by offering direct medical services, medical capacity building and strengthening relationships that improve healthcare systems.Our VisionTo see every African have access to safe and timely healthcare.Everyone has a right to equitable healthcare so that more people can live healthy lives. Our vision is to serve Africa’s healthcare needs with professional volunteers, hospital ships, and programs that meet the highest standards of care.Our MissionTo bring first world healthcare to a developing country.There is a healthcare crisis in Africa. Every year, poverty and inadequate health services leave millions of people vulnerable, sick, and infirmed. As a result, individuals and communities cannot flourish because of hardships caused by barriers to work, caring for their families, or pursuing education.It is our mission to bring accessible healthcare services to people in great need. We do this by offering surgical, eye and dental care and medical capacity-building programs designed to strengthen healthcare systems. Contributing to improved Africa healthcare means more people can participate more fully in social and economic activities. Improving lives and communities (and ultimately the country) is the impact of our work.
13 Jobs
Operation Smile is a volunteer-based global medical charity that provides free surgery to repair cleft lip, cleft palate and other facial differences in children and young adults. We are active in over 60 countries around the world. Annually, over 6,000 volunteer medical professionals including credentialed surgeons, pediatricians, doctors, nurses, child-life specialists and many others, selflessly give their expertise to help patients and ensure the highest standard of care in all that they do.In high-income countries like Canada, surgery to fix cleft conditions is common and is usually done before a child is 18 months old.In low and middle-income countries, where we conduct our missions, it can take years to receive treatment. Children and their families face enormous hurdles that prevent them from getting the surgical care they need. Many people have to travel great distances for care and most simply have no money to pay for surgery or healing medications.Sometimes people just don’t know that help is available. Sometimes there is simply no care to access.
7 Jobs
The original Billy Riordan Memorial Clinic was opened in 2004 to provide primary care medical services to the people of Chembe and Cape Maclear in Malawi in Central Africa.At the time there was no medical treatment available in the community of approximately 16,000 people. Men, women and children died on a daily basis from largely preventable and treatable diseases. The nearest district hospital is a one and a half hour difficult journey away and was out of reach for most villagers. Today The Billy Clinic remains the only medical care available in the area.In 2007 a small in-patient unit was added and the clinic now provides 24 hour medical care on an in-patient and out-patient basis to the largely subsistence farming population.During the dry season an average of 80 patients attend the clinic every day but this can rise to 120 during the wet season.The conditions most frequently seen are HIV/Aids and Malaria and associated diseases such as asthma, dysentery and malnutrition.The Clinic is staffed mainly on a volunteer basis and is constantly seeking new volunteers. All our funding comes from donations of which 91% goes directly to the running costs of the clinic. If you could give 4/5 months volunteer service to the clinic, we would love to hear from you.
1 Job
Helping Hands Health Education (HHHE) is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 1992 by Colorado businessman and philanthropist Narayan Shrestha. HHHE’s mission is to provide sustainable health and education services to children and adults throughout the world without personal, religious, or political prejudice. Under the direction of Mr. Shrestha, HHHE has leveraged local relationships and an intimate understanding of language, cultural, and political circumstances to create viable solutions at the community level for addressing significant disparities in both health and education. With an initial focus on Nepal, HHHE has expanded its work to include other nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.Our mission is to provide health and education services to children and adults throughout the world without personal, religious, or political prejudice.
Amazon Promise is a non-profit organization providing medical relief to remote communities in the Upper Amazon Basin of Northeastern Peru, headquartered in the US with an in-country base in Iquitos, Peru.
Over 80% of the world’s population lives within 5 miles of a coast, but far too many communities still live in remote poverty without access to basic health care. Poorly charted waters and rugged terrain, political factors, social disenfranchisement, poor health knowledge, poverty and lack of infrastructure separate these communities from care. The Floating Doctors medical team was formed to answer these challenges to accessible health care.In 2010, Floating Doctors sailed to Haiti for our first mission- assisting in the earthquake relief efforts- aboard Southern Wind, a donated and rebuilt ship filled with 20,000 pounds of aid supplies. This experience helped form the foundational pillars of our mission: improved health at the individual level, capacity building at the community level, and improved healthcare delivery and commitment to service worldwide.Since 2011, we have been building a permanent, sustainable rural health service and community development assistance program in Panama. We deploy our mobile clinics by boat, packhorse or on foot to remote underserved areas, where we conduct ongoing health services and community development projects. Our programs cover thousands of square miles of jungle-covered mountain and mangrove mazes in which we are often the only medical, dental, or veterinary service available. With challenges affecting health at every level, Floating Doctors utilizes a highly versatile approach to a dynamic health environment. Our programs address individual and community health—not only do we provide acute and ongoing medical care, but also include education, training, community projects, supply donation, and preventive health interventions to create sustainable improvements in health. Our programs are continuously evaluated in partnership with the individual communities to ensure our services are tailored to each community’s self-identified health needs.
International Medical Relief (IMR) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that provides health care to under-served and vulnerable people around the world. IMR recruits qualified medical, dental, and surgical teams and offers short-term assignments for volunteer doctors, dentists, and other health care professionals as well as non-medical volunteers to conduct medical clinics in areas where medical care is limited or difficult to obtain. IMR was founded on the belief that knowledge of basic health facts and access to health care should not be the prerogative of select nations, regions, or classes, but should be shared by as many people as possible. While IMR operates sustainable, long-term solutions in our communities, global health volunteers ofter participate for one to two weeks beyond our borders.Our work is undertaken to include some of the millions of people who have been excluded from today’s healthcare systems worldwide. Through partnerships with local medical professionals and the entire community with regard to education, diagnosis, and treatment a valuable sharing of knowledge occurs. This empowers people in limited resource settings to provide for their own health and for each other.IMR contributes to the world’s communities by improving the overall health and wellness of the people via medical diagnosis and treatment, partnerships with local medical designees, community training, and fostering the principles of prevention.The success of our trips is fully dependent on our partnerships in the countries we serve. Our goal is to establish long-term relationships that allow us to revisit each of the communities in which we work every year.We partner with in-country hosts willing to make a multi-year commitment for the benefit of the communities that we serve. With our medical team, support staff, and the health care supplies and medicines that we will bring with us, we will be able to see hundreds of patients each clinic day.