History

MCAI was founded in 1995 as a response to the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. One of our founder members, a paediatrician, had worked in the country for UNICEF, attending to injured children and witnessing first hand the horrors of war and the suffering that took place. Upon his return to the UK, the doctor could not turn his back on what he had seen and together with other leading paediatricians, they set up MCAI.

At the time Bosnia's health services had either been destroyed or greatly disrupted and therefore we began our work by undertaking an emergency aid programme and evacuated sick and injured children to the UK for urgent medical and surgical treatment, without which many of them would have died. Together with Lions Clubs International (LCI) who paid for the treatment and travel, we treated over 40 children. We soon recognised that a long term development project was needed to help build up the health service and we established paediatric and neonatal Intensive Care Units in hospitals, trained medical and nursing staff and renovated and equipped children's wards.  This was all funded by LCI who continue to be our partner.

Two years later, we expanded into other countries and set up developmental projects - first Albania and then we entered sub-Saharan Africa and set up an outreach project in Uganda for orphaned children who have HIV/AIDS. Over the next few years we were working in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Cameroon on projects to improve the health care services in these countries. We have responded to natural disasters and armed conflict in the past - in Kosovo, Sri Lanka and Pakistan where we provided emergency medical relief but we also remained in the country for a number of years after working on long-term projects.

Despite healthcare improvements many women and children continue to die owing to poverty and lack of access to facilities. This is especially the case in an emergency whether caused by accident, illness or childbirth. Improved maternal health is essential and in 2006 we began to focus on projects which incorporated this, in addition to infant and child health.

Read about our current projects here...