- Member profile

Health Volunteers Overseas (HVO) is a private non-profit organization based in Washington D.C. committed to improving healthcare in developing countries through training and education. By emphasizing teaching, HVO aims to create an indigenous group of trained health workers who can teach others. This builds an ongoing capability that will benefit the population long after the volunteer has departed. It has projects in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and the Caribbean. Currently, HVO supports over 60 projects in more than 25 countries. Each project is different depending on the technological capacity of the country.

- Main activities

HVO is a teaching and training organization. Volunteers lecture, conduct ward rounds and demonstrate various techniques in classrooms, clinics, and operating rooms. They may be involved in teacher training, curriculum development, and mentoring of students. These providers can be in the following specialties: anesthesia, dermatology, internal medicine, oral and maxillofacial surgery, orthopaedics, pediatrics, hand surgeons. These highly skilled and experienced volunteers come from both private practice and university settings, with a significant number of retirees as well.

- Links to the health workforce crisis

HVO develops and implements clinical training programs in various developing countries. These training programs are staffed by highly-skilled health care professionals in the US and Canada who volunteer their time and expertise to provide training and education to local health care providers to make a difference in their communities. HVO's overall mission is to improve the availability and quality of health care in developing countries through training and education.

Source: WHO, 2019

新形态2020