Over 80% of the world’s population lives within 5 miles off a coast, but far too many communities still live in remote poverty without access to basic health care. Poorly charted waters and rugged terrain, political factors, social disenfranchisement, poor health knowledge, poverty and lack of infrastructure separate these communities from care.

Founded by Dr. Benjamin La Brot, the Floating Doctors medical team was formed to answer these challenges to health. Floating Doctors deploy medical teams by boat, packhorse or on foot to remote under-served areas, where we conduct ongoing health services and community development projects. To help them reach these forgotten communities, the sailing ship ‘Southern Wind’ was donated and rebuilt as a medical relief platform.

In 2010 Floating Doctors sailed for their first mission in Haiti with medical volunteers and 20,000 pounds of aid supplies to assist in the earthquake relief efforts. Haiti defined the capabilities and potential for Floating Doctors mission work—long-range response to disasters, self-sufficient operation platform on station, ability to bring health care to remote communities, tailoring care and assistance to the specific health needs of the community, creating partnerships with other groups, and engaging local agencies and communities to assist in making better health possible. Floating Doctors then traveled to work in Honduras, and returned once more to Haiti in 2011 to assist in the cholera epidemic.

In 2012 Floating Doctors sailed to Panama to serve the indigenous, Ngobe, population, in the Bocas del Toro region. As of now our team is building a permanent sustainable rural health service and community development assistance program over a 7,000 square mile area of jungle-covered mountain and mangrove mazes. The Floating Doctors are often the only attainable medical service available in this archipelago . Worms and other parasites, machete wounds, malnutrition, dengue fever, STDs, HIV, poor pre-natal health, shark bites, infected sores, malaria, scabies, lightning strikes and fungal infections are among the many conditions encountered. The absence of sanitation, electricity, clean water and other basic infrastructure combined with poverty and poor health knowledge compound every challenge to health care. Despite these challenges, to date over 40,000 patients have received care from their teams.

Floating Doctors utilizes a highly versatile approach to a dynamic health environment, to break down both cultural and educational barriers. Their programs address individual and community health—not only by providing acute and ongoing medical care, but also include education, training, community projects, supply donation, and preventive interventions to create sustainable improvements to health literacy, as well as health care. This includes delivering birth control and condoms and providing sexual health services and education. Their programs are continuously evaluated and adapted to ensure Floating Doctors focuses on the current key health issues identified in communities.

After over 1,500 clinical deployments the Floating Doctors model, and our ability to deliver results has been proven many times over. With a committed and experienced leadership and board, as well as key local and international partnerships, Floating Doctors has grown in scope every year since we first set sail on ‘Southern Wind,’ and has been able to continue to make a real impact in the lives of many.

In 2013 GLYDE America launched an exciting collaboration with Maternova, Inc., an award-winning organization working on the front lines in developing countries to prevent childbirth related deaths – the leading cause of maternal mortality worldwide. Annually, over 280,000 women die from maternal complications, including postpartum hemorrhage. Several million more will suffer permanent disability and other childbirth related complications.

Easily avoidable pregnancy related death is a terrible trend which we must and absolutely can change. Thanks to Maternova’s innovative, affordable and low-tech solution, the ‘Guardian CBT’ kit, arresting postpartum hemorrhage is possible even under the most challenging circumstances.

As opposed to the expensive conventional medical kits which can be hard to access and can cost upwards of $300, Maternova’ s low-tech Guardian CBT kit components and application are inexpensive and rather simple: A condom is attached to one end of a sterile IV tube, attached to the other end an IV bag filled with sterile water. The condom is inserted through the vagina to the uterus and pumped full of the liquid – so it acts as a balloon inside the uterus, and stops life threatening hemorrhaging. GLYDE America donates condoms to help reduce the costs associated with kit assembly.

The first sexual health company founded on the principles of social engagement, since 1991 GLYDE has donated millions of condoms globally and is instrumental in advancing HIV/AIDS and STI prevention through partnerships with public health agencies and non-profit organizations including the Australian Health Ministry, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Planned Parenthood and ACON. Via our Red Ribbon campaign, we’ve distributed free condoms to sex workers throughout Southeast Asia in conjunction with safe sex education and HIV/AIDS prevention organizations.

GLYDE America Sponsors the Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance

The mission of Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance is to claim sexual freedom as a fundamental human right. Through research, education and seeking social policy development and advocacy, Woodhull advances the principle that the autonomy of the person requires that all human beings control their own bodies, minds and spirits and therefore their destinies.

Woodhull’s vision affirms that all persons are free of social and legal sexual oppression, and have the right to sexual self-expression, and that sexual freedom as the fundamental human right of all individuals to develop and express their unique sexuality; to be personally autonomous with regard to bodily integrity and expression of body mind and spirit; and to enjoy sexual dignity, privacy and consensual sexual expression without societal or governmental interference, coercion or stigmatization.

The Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance works on key human rights issues including Sexual Speech & Expression, Sexual Health & Rights, Integration of Sex and Religion, LGBT Rights, Reproductive Justice, Civil Rights, Sexuality Education, and Legal/Human Rights for Consensual Sex Work.

Through an umbrella of services including clinic support initiatives, advanced clinical research, provider training, patient education, advocacy and consumer awareness, CFHC delivers reproductive health care for millions of clients. As the administrator of California’s leading federal family planning program and the nation’s largest Title X system – CFHC funds family planning and reproductive health services for low-income and uninsured clients through nearly 80 health care organizations collectively operating nearly 345 health centers serving more than one million women, men and teens annually in 42 of California’s 58 counties. The CFHC network includes a broad spectrum of providers including federally qualified health centers, city and county health departments, stand-alone family planning health centers, school-based clinics and community or free clinics. A key function of these programs includes supplying clients with free or affordable contraceptives — including condoms.