A new initiative is being developed to link up health professionals working with people who are homeless, with their counterparts across the EU. The European Federation of National Organisations working with people who are homeless (FEANTSA), together with doctors in the Netherlands and the UK, are working to launch this network in March.

My organisation is a hospital called Ersta Diakoni, it is a nonprofit organisation, privat.

From the beginning, it started 1854, it was a small hospital where the first nurses/diakons in Sweden were educated. It was established by money from a young singer Jenny Lind (who had a lot of money) and a young nurse. The "speciality" of this hospital is to define and help people who need it best. We also treat hidden foreigners here e.g. We have hidden places for battered women and children abused. It is also just an ordinary hospital.

We still have a mild winter and that is a good thing so far for the people not having home. Longing for the sun!

Christel Lundh

Web address:  http://www.erstadiakoni.se/Page2.aspx 

Dr. Mimi Doohan Treats the Homeless Where They Live

By This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , March 1, 2007
photos by Paul Wellman

I t’s Monday night in Isla Vista and St. Athanasius Orthodox Church is serving up its weekly dinner for the homeless. A dozen or so bedraggled-looking souls wander onto the tidy, concrete patio for what will likely be their first and only square meal of the day.

Tonight the crowd consists only of men, and they largely keep to themselves, carrying plates piled with food to the picnic tables and eating quietly. Milling about in his clerical blacks and white collar is the church’s rector, Father Jon-Stephen Hedges, a broad-shouldered, distinguished-looking man in his late fifties. There is also a dark-eyed social worker named Jennifer Ferraez, who surreptitiously gauges the well-being of each guest.