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FIMA EXCO semi-annual meeting was held in Istanbul, Turkey on march 10-11 2012. Our Turkish member Hayat Foundation was very gracious to host the event. Dr. Ihsan Karaman wears several hats e.g. Vice President FIMA, President Hayat Foundation and Chairman of the Board of Doctors World Wide-Turkey. His team did a wonderful job arranging the event which included a mini symposium on "Organ Transplantation From Ethical, Islamic and Social Perspective".

Several FIMA executives and local educators participated. The meeting was held at HF office and we were given a tour of DWW-Turkey office. The entire committee was in attendance and several FIMA matters were discussed. Now we are looking forward to the 29th annual FIMA Council meeting in September and the detailed schedule is included in this issue. IMA of Malaysia promises a memorable convention.

I encourage you all to attend and participate as a speaker also. A few slots are still open in the speakers list. The presentations will be published in the next FIMA Year Book of 2012.

We are working progressively on the medical relief front. Prior to Istanbul FIMA EXCO meeting, I was in Khartoum, Sudan with the FIMA SaveSmile team of 20 from Islamic Medical Association of North America (IMANA) and we performed 158 cleft lip and palate repair operations, bringing the total to 500. Sudan Islamic Medical Association (SIMA) organized and hosted the camp.

DWW Turkey is planning cleft lip camp in Gaza, Palestine in coming June and FIMA SaveVision has completed more than 85,000 free cataract and related surgeries and have scheduled their next camp in Africa in June and July this year.

FIMA SaveDignity team headed by Dr. Iqbal Khan and Dr. Aftab Malik of Pakistan Islamic Medical Association (PIMA) held their camp in Zuleenja, Sudan in March 2012 and performed twenty complicated surgeries.

FIMA / IMANA / Islamic Relief project in Mogadishu, Somalia had to be aborted after one month of medical services by Pakistan IMA due to the deteriorating security situation in the city. However, Hayat Foundation and Doctors World Wide-Turkey are now fully operational in Mogadishu in spide of the dangerous security threats to the medical relief workers.

They built and now operate the Shifa Hospital and are providing medical and nutritional help to the tragic draught stricken population of Somalia. Our member organization Somalian Young Doctors' Association (SOYDA) is actively working with them.

Dr. Omar AlHayat of Egypt IMA/AMU and FIMA EXCO member had busy past 6 months. He visited Mogadishu, Somalia twice and made working visits to Gaza, Palestine. He also went to assess and provide medical relief to the victims of Syrian armed forces who have killed thousands and injured tens of thousands civilians in the current up rising. He went to the Syrian borders with Jordan and Lebanon.

The current situation in Syria remains serious. IMANA recently donated $50,000 to the Syrian cause through the Hayat Foundation of Turkey and IMA of Lebanon purchased two ambulances to transport the injured in Syrian towns of Homs and other surrounding areas who are having a great difficulty in reaching Lebanon for the emergency treatments.

FIMA e-Newsletter will be featuring dedicated issues to our member IMA's. Please send a detailed report on the current leadership and activities of your IMA. It is a great tool to communicate with the world medical communities.

Dr. Parvaiz Malik
President FIMA 2009-2013

With the grace of Allah SWT, FIMA relief projects like FIMA Save Vision, FIMA SAVE Smile, FIMA SAVE Dignity & FIMA Mobile Mother & Child Clinic have excelled and are moving ahead with a fast pace and extending highly needed medical relief services to the destitute, which are in need of these vital and essential life saving programs.

A team of IMANA doctors including myself & Dr. Ismail Mehr, IMANA relief chair will be visiting Sudan in first week of March 2012 & this time we have planned to perform complicated surgeries as well. FIMA SAVE VISION is busy with its Eye Camps inside Pakistan in collaboration with POB & a number of camps have also been planned in the African peninsula. FIMA Mobile Mother & Child health clinic in collaboration with IMANA Relief has also rendered unmatched services especially in the areas of school health service in the flood affected areas of Punjab province of Pakistan.

The concept of relief and charity starts at home. I, therefore urge all the IMA's to establish and reinforce their relief wings. It is no doubt a key to success and to Jannah alike. No matter how small our efforts are, these will be rewarded by ALLAH SWT in the best manner INSHAALLAH.

Dr. Parvaiz Malik
President FIMA 2009-2013

Dear members of FIMA fraternity, two of our IMA brothers; Rd. Ismail Mehr, IMANA relief chair and Dr. Ihsan Karaman, Hayat foundation / DWW Turkey have recently returned from Somalia after witnessing the humanity dying in the streets and abandoned towns of Somalia. It is so compassionate, heart touching and shocking to discern the facts and observe the plight of our fellow human beings suffering just a few hours of travel time from prosperous and affluent countries.

I am sharing the mail in his own words which I received from Dr. Ihsan Karaman:

Last weekend, I paid a 24-hour visit to Mogadishu/Somalia with our Prime Minister Tayiip Erdogan. During this visit, we personally witnessed the crisis in the Horn of Africa. Due to the shortage of time and strict security measures applied to the Prime Minister's delegation, I could not meet up with SOYDA representative Dr. Abdiqani Sheikh Omar, although we had previously agreed to meet.

However, right after my return, our delegation of three people who went to Mogadishu representing DWW had contacts with Dr. Abdiqani about the details of the FIMA / IMANA / Islamic Relief joint relief efforts.

The sights I saw during my Mogadishu visit have engraved on my soul. I experienced in Mogadishu what it is like to be ashamed of being human. I have seen many places on earth that have become the homes of poverty and deprivation: grave houses in Cairo; Sana's poverty-stricken ghettos in Yemen; bitter lives in tin homes abandoned to their faiths in Soweto/Johannesburg; camps of freedom fighters in the Kashmiri mountains; thatched shacks in the deserts of Niger under which children, whose only food is millet, have to sleep; Palestinean refugee camps where misery is on every corner; Rio's rebellious ghettos, Masai villages in Kenyan desert where people have not met civilization… None of them, but none of them, could be compared with the inexpressible misery I witnessed in the refugee camps in Mogadishu the other day. What are agonizing there are not only those innocent people, but also the whole humanity itself. Nowhere I have seen or have not seen on Earth, people would starve to death with tears in their eyes. Death I saw in Somalia was a dark trap between famine and guns.

Wherever you ran, the result was the same: to die or to die… Tens of thousands of people; babies, children, the young and the old, women and men… Gathered in camps surrounded by barbed wire, where garbage, sewage, diseases and misery are everywhere… Living without a bath for months, without food for days, and without a smile for years… If you can call it living… A family or two in shacks made of sticks tied with rags and tatters, in which even one person would hardly fit in… Food, water, hygiene, medicine, vaccination, affection, attention… Deprived of all these basic human needs, they feel the breath of death down their necks. The whole world is watching as if it is watching a movie or a ghost with bated breath. From a distance, and in a sterile way… But we enter this monotonous world of theirs; touch their skins, bodies, hands and faces; bundle up their poorness and hopelessness even if for a short time; and embrace their babies and elders with love and affection, and without hesitation. Those innocent faces light up for a moment, and then roll back into darkness like a flash in the pan or bubbles of foam disappearing. The beautiful people of the country of inexpressible sufferings… Day and night, we pray for them.

The DWW has been working in the region in full capacity and by all available means since the beginning of the crisis. Both in and around the Garissa/Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, in Somalia, and in Mogadishu in particular, we have been striving to distribute food and humanitarian aid on one hand, and to provide medical service on the other. Within the framework of these efforts, we have delivered cooked food of iftar to thousands of refugees in the Dadaab region everyday since the beginning of Ramadan, also delivered dry food packages to Somali refugees in Kenya, and sent medical aid worth $500,000 to Mogadishu. In addition, in an orphanage in Mombasa/Kenya, called Khadija Center, every day 400 poor people are being served cooked food for iftar. Also, four teams of DWW volunteers, with two doctors in each team, went to Dadaab/Kenya and Mogadishu so far. A team of five DWW members, including our Vice President, is going to Mogadishu this weekend to spend the Eid ul-Fitr there as well.

In parallel with the fact that the Republic of Turkey has mobilized all its resources, and Prime Minister Erdogan's special interest in the issue, the Prime Minister personally assigned the DWW as the coordinator of the medical aid efforts in Somalia. All medical aid provided to Somalia by our Ministry of Health, the Turkish Red Crescent, TIKA, and Turkish civil society organizations is and will be carried out under our coordination or within our knowledge. In addition to this big responsibility, we have also reached the final stage in our negotiations with the ministries of health of Kenya and Somalia to obtain licenses and take over the operation of two hospitals, two basic health units and a malnutrition centre in Somalia and in Dadaab region of Kenya, that will start operating within the next few weeks. We are going to sign the contracts in the upcoming days. We are going to operate these medical centres for at least one year, employing local doctors and nurses, and supporting them with the volunteer health professionals of DWW both from Turkey and UK.

In addition to all these efforts, and as I previously mentioned, we, as an integral part of the FIMA family, will partake with all our available means in the joint FIMA/IMANA/Islamic Relief aid activity that will start at the Mogadishu Banadir Hospital after the Eid. Right now, we are experiencing a boom in volunteer doctors in Turkey who are eager to go and serve in Somalia. Insha'Allah, a lot of our volunteers will provide medical service to the aggrieved Somalians at the Banadir Hospital, the schedule of which will be provided in due time.

Last but not the least; I would like to share a piece of good news that honoured us, and will significantly facilitate our aid activities in Somalia. Our Turkish friend Dr. Kani Torun, the Ex-CEO of the DWW-UK and member of the executive board of DWW-UK and founders' committee of the DWW-Turkey at present, has been assigned as the first Ambassador of the Republic of Turkey to Somalia. We at the DWW are all proud and greatly empowered by the fact that a medical doctor has been assigned as ambassador to a country for the first time in the history of Turkey. Our brother Dr. Torun, who will take office in Mogadishu after the Eid, will also be serving as a moral representative for the FIMA. As we are approaching close to the 28th annual council meeting of FIMA in Jakarta in mid September our relief efforts are also at their peak.

We are inspired by the passion of Brs Ismail Mehr and Ihsan Karaman as they prepare teams to meet the health and humanitarian relief challenges in Somalia. We are proud of our brothers in AMU who have quietly continued their emergency care of the casualties of the Libyan uprising which has resulted in victory for the people but at considerable cost.

We wait with watchful expectancy for the resolution of the conflict in Yemen and Syria and the return of peace, democracy and transparent and just governance.

We commend all those participating in relief projects in these various parts of the world (DWW, Mercy Malaysia, IMANA and PIMA in Somalia), AMU in Egypt/Libya, IMASA in Gaza, IMANA/Islamic Hospital in Amman, Jordan. We pray that your good work is accepted and relieved of its burden!

Hope to see you all in Jakarta soon!

Dr Parvaiz Malik,
President FIMA