Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Thank you for visiting our fundraising page, and joining VON to support the lifesaving mission of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)!

During the Vermont Oxford Network 2016 Annual Quality Congress we will learn from experts working at the cutting edge of clinical and improvement science in neonatology. We will also learn from colleagues practicing in the face of severe resource constraints and humanitarian crises. All of us share a common goal, to provide the best possible and ever improving care to newborn infants and families wherever they may live. As we convene our worldwide community of practice this year we have a unique opportunity to recognize the wide diversity of contexts in which we practice and to learn from and share with one another the challenges we face and the solutions we have discovered.

Some colleagues face challenges more extreme than most of us can imagine. One such colleague is the Syrian pediatrician, Dr. Mohammad Wassim Maaz. He died in an airstrike on the al-Quds hospital in Aleppo, Syria in April 2016 which also killed a dentist, three nurses and 22 civilians. The Al-Quds hospital was supported by Médecins Sans Frontières and the International Committee of the Red Cross. A group of doctors still practicing in Aleppo commemorated him by saying, “We will always remember Dr. Maaz as the kindest and bravest of souls, whose devotion to treating the youngest victims of this war was unparalleled.”

We dedicate the 2016 Vermont Oxford Network Annual Quality Congress to the memory of Dr. Mohammad Wassim Maaz and to the other physicians, nurses, and allied health professionals around the world who have died practicing in the face of humanitarian crises and war.

To honor their sacrifice, Vermont Oxford Network will be matching dollar for dollar up to $15,000 in donations made to Doctors Without Borders through this page until the end of October 2016.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an independent international medical humanitarian organization that provides aid to people in some 60 countries whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe, primarily due to armed conflict, epidemics, malnutrition, exclusion from health care, or natural disasters. 

Thank you for your support and for getting involved. Every little bit helps and is greatly appreciated (and Tax deductible!)!  You can learn more about its work by visiting www.doctorswithoutborders.org.