The African Medical & Research Foundation (AMREF) is the world’s leading African health development organization. Founded in 1957 and headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, AMREF has offices in 18 countries around the world. It is the only international organization of its kind.
Mission: AMREF ensures access to good health for the most vulnerable people in Africa. With their active involvement we develop and implement innovative and sustainable solutions to critical health challenges facing the continent.
AMREF in Canada supports AMREF in Africa by raising funds, providing project support, building capacity, raising awareness and engaging Canadians in African health development.
History: AMREF was founded over 50 years ago by three surgeons who established the Flying Doctor Service in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro. Michael Wood, Archibald McIndoe and Tom Rees were inspired to bring medical care to remote East African communities after seeing the devastating combination of poverty, tropical disease and a shortage of health care professionals.
In 1957 the Flying Doctor Service began delivering mobile health care and providing mission hospitals with surgical support. By the 1960s the Service expanded to include ground ambulances. Over the next two decades AMREF began training health professionals and focusing on community based care.
Today, AMREF is Africa’s leading health development organization.
Where We Work: AMREF’s major programs are in eastern and southern Africa: Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa, Southern Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. AMREF’s training programs and health learning materials reach across Africa and beyond.
People: There are over 700 people working for AMREF worldwide. More than 600 are in Africa and more than 90 per cent are from the communities where they work. In Canada, AMREF has six full time staff members in its Toronto-based office.
What We Do: AMREF brings good quality and affordable health care closer to those who need it most in Africa, improving access to health treatment and preventing poor health through community education. Working closely with African communities and governments AMREF ensures that its health projects are relevant and sustainable.
AMREF Canada works with funders such as the Canadian Government, Foundations, Corporations and many conscious individual supporters to secure vital funds for our work in Africa.
Accomplishments: AMREF’s Flying Doctor Service has performed more than 45,000 emergency airlifts and more than 60,000 life-saving surgeries in rural health centres. Every year AMREF provides children and adults with 50,000 immunizations against polio, measels, tetenus and other life threatening diseases. AMREF is also a leader in East African laboratory testing. Six million people depend on AMREF labs for diagnosis and protection against harmful illnesses.
AMREF’s community based projects improve health care across Africa, including;
• Increasing the number of families with mosquito nets to prevent malaria from seven to 77 per cent in Ethiopia’s remote north-eastern Afar region.
• Training hundreds of South African Traditional Healers in HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and counseling.
• Performing more than 1,500 lab tests annually to determine the causes of fatal diseases and to protect people from them.
Budget: Over the last five decades AMREF has grown internationally from a budget of $12,000 annually to more than $65 million in 2007.
Awards: AMREF is the only NGO to receive both the Bill and Melinda Gates Award for Global Health and the Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize for making a major and lasting impact on health in Africa.
Support our programs by making a donation.
