med4hope

In many countries around the world there are programs where medical staff and social workers actively seek out and medically assist homeless people. Our project would like to establish this model in Austria. Volunteer medical personnel and social workers go regularly visit the homeless where they reside, to assist seriously ill patients with their medical concerns. This program is in cooperation with numerous street worker NGO's.

Many homeless people are not physically capable of visiting available medical facilities. This can cause even treatable maladies to drastically worsen to the point of becoming life threatening. Even if an ambulance is called, homeless persons often decline transport to the hospital for lack of trust, or because of a psychosis. 

Our trained medical staff are contacted by street workers when they meet homeless people that they feel might be in need. A med4hope doctor, with a street worker, will then visit these homeless persons at their place of residence to assist them. 

med4hope is initiator and facilitator of the med4hope mission. Furthermore, med4hope staff takes care of training, recruits medical staff for our street work in cooperation with: all street work organisations based in Vienna, the Austrian Caritas, the Association for Legal Representation for the Homeless, and the Medical Association of Austria. 

Homeless patients are treated in a timely and effective fashion avoiding unnecessary escalation of health issues. Ambulance staff are relieved of emergency deployments. Patients develop a relationship of trust to medical staff and street workers, which can, in turn, help save lives. 

Our initiative in Vienna can be replicated in any city or country. It requires only trained medical staff with a well-stocked medical backpack that works closely with street workers. Furthermore, the program requires coordination.