Changing Lives

Free Surgical Camp has been running each January since 1999. We believe that we are very unique to larger health care efforts and charities operating in India. We pride ourselves on being able to show donors exactly where your money is being spent. We are a smaller charity and have the advantage of being able to spend all of our donations directly on the poorest of the poor and their medical needs.

Commitment

Each January, Dr. George Longstreth, surgeon and FOCI board member and Joe Bardenheier IV lead a US based team of fifteen to twenty volunteers made up of physicians and lay people to St. Mary’s Mission Hospital in Khammam to conduct a Free Surgical Camp. The team conducts thousands of examinations and hundreds of operations on indigent patients over ten days, all completely free of charge.

FOCI - CSU

In India, government-provided medical programs are insufficient to meet the needs of the enormous population, and too often medical care is available only to those who can pay for it. Friends of Christ India “FOCI” a US based 501(c)(3) has helped to meet the need for decent medical care for many patients in the Khammam region by providing support and funding to the Christian Service Unit “CSU” which manages not only the St. Mary’s Mission Hospital and the Free Surgical Camp located at SMMH but a number of other very important services to the poor. These include education for poor children, homes for the aged and those with AIDS, leprosy villages, orphanages and food programs.

St. Mary's Mission Hospital

In addition to supporting the Free Surgical Camp, FOCI has helped support the redevelopment of St. Mary’s Hospital, a 100-year-old mission hospital serving the poor of Khammam district. We have helped recruit new doctors, train nurses and improve the facilities.  Such recent improvements include the purchase of new sterilization autoclaves, a new cautery machine, bore well motors, post op mattresses, road and campus signage, maternity ward upgrades, a new generator, new doctor/patient transport vehicle, patient and family covered canteen, walkway repairs and garden and grass landscaping. Additionally, FOCI funds help pay for medical care of the poor either at St. Mary’s or through a small network of regional health clinics who also act as a patient “feeder system” to St. Mary’s.