Annual Appeals
Annual Appeal 2008
Annual Appeal 2007
Annual Appeal 2006

Brochures
Tibetan Healing Fund
Kumbum Tibetan Medical Hospital

Dear Friends of Tibetan Healing Fund:

First, I would like to offer my personal thanks for supporting Tibetan Healing Fund’s work this year. I have been continually astonished by the generosity of Tibetan Healing Fund’s donors; your giving has not been limited to financial support but also includes your volunteer hours, public relations efforts, words of support and encouragement, and championing of our mission. We are grateful and humbled. I am delighted to be able to share with you the remarkable achievements you have made possible.  We have included with the end of the year Annual Appeal, THF’s special edition newsletter Giving Birth to Hope - Building a Birth Center for the Next Generation of Tibetans, which includes three letters fromTibetan Healing Fund’s in-country local­ Tibetan partners of the Birth Center.

In 2009, a dream turned to reality for Tibetan residents of Rebkong when the Tibetan Birth Center opened on July 25th.  The $90,000 USD Birth Center was designed based on the concepts of modern community oriented primary health care in public health in the United States.  It is a center for providing mothers and children safe, affordable, linguistically and culturally appropriate health services and medicines.  Also, its mission is to provide health education to the mothers and their husbands. The center’s services are based on Tibetan medicine, local culture, and modern medicine.

Tibetan Healing Fund aims to make the Birth Center a model facility and one that can be replicated in other areas of need.  The Birth Center will be a force to improve maternal and child health care in remote and rural areas of Tibet and we strive for it to be a major component of the health care system.  We are hoping to have a positive impact in terms of increasing utilization of high quality health care services, which will reduce mortality and morbidity among women and children.

Health care service provided at the Birth Center during August, September and October 2009:

The Birth Center could not have been conceived or begun without the financial support of our donors in the USA as well as donations of time, resources, and medical equipment from local Tibetan and Chinese friends.  In a very real sense, the Birth Center in Rebkong and Tibetan Healing Fund USA have become part of one very large, extended family.  And, like a family, we have shared goals, values and hopes, and a commitment to providing access to safe health services; paramount among all of the values we share is a firm dedication to healthy mothers and children, free of sickness and suffering.

Since 2005, THF has trained Tibetan medical students to assess needs and educate over 12,000 rural Tibetan women.  Rural women received culturally and linguistically appropriate health education on women’s physiology and health, family heath, hygiene, nutrition, infectious diseases, such as HIV/AIDS and TB and disease prevention.  During the summer of 2009, fifty Tibetan medical students from mSo-Ngon University Tibetan Medical College travelled to rural Tibetan villages in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, Qinghai, Gansu and Sichuan Provinces to provide maternal and child healthcare to 3,000 Tibetan women. 

In 2009, I had the opportunity and privilege to travel nationwide to present at various universities, businesses, social organizations and medical groups.  These events gave me and the other THF members a wonderful opportunity to meet people from all over the country and talk to them about Tibet, Tibetan Medicine, culture, the educational and health needs of Tibetans.  In addition, to increase outreach events and create awareness about Tibet and raise funds for THF projects, we recently created new Fundraising Branches in New York City, Charlottesville Virginia and Dallas Texas.

Tibetan Healing Fund’s goals for 2010 are to:

As we build on our past successes and move into our 9th year of providing healthcare and education, I want to emphasize that it is your generosity that makes all of this possible.  Please help us make miracles (small or large) happen.  For example, $50 allows primary school students to read textbooks in their native language; $155 provides medical kits for community midwives; $350 helps village women attend community midwife training or help rural teachers attend teacher training; $1,000 sends Tibetan medical students to rural villages, sharing important health information or provides rural village school improvements.

On behalf of Tibetan children and their families, I send you our sincere gratitude for your support and your commitment to THF’s mission to improve the healthcare and education for rural Tibetan children and their families in the Tibetan regions of P.R. China.  Thank you for helping us pave the way for a healthier and better educated Tibet.  From everyone at Tibetan Healing Fund, may there be peace, good fortune and compassion with your loved ones and friends in 2010.  Happy Holidays and a Blessed New Year!

Kunchok Gyaltsen
Tibetan Medical Doctor (TMD), MIIM, MPH, PhD(c.)
Founder and Board President