Watsi is a nonprofit healthcare crowdsourcing platform that enables individual donors to directly fund medical care for individuals in developing countries without access to affordable medical care. Their small team believes everyone deserve healthcare and they are on a mission to make healthcare accessible to everyone. How it works is that a Watsi medical service provider partner submits a patient profile to the nonprofit.
So far 26, 518 patients’ healthcare has been funded by Watsi. 100% of individuals’ donations go to life-changing patient surgeries. Funds are transferred from Watsi to the medical care partner providing treatment. Donors contributing to a specific patient’s treatment receives medical updates.
Individual’s donations can be as little as $5.00. Administrative and operational expenses are covered separately by foundations, philanthropists and by donors leaving an optional tip at checkout on their website. The idea for the nonprofit was born December 2010 when one of the cofounders was traveling by bus in Central America. A woman boarded the bus and asked passengers for donation to cover her son’s medical care.
Working with its medical care partners Watsi has supported patients in 30 countries. Some of Watsi’s medical care partners include Children’s Surgical Centre in Cambodia, African Mission Healthcare in Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya and Malawi and Burma Children’s Medical Fund in Burma, and Thailand, Haiti Cardiac Alliance in Haiti. A patient goes into one of the partnering healthcare facilities, though they cannot afford to pay, seeking treatment. A team member of healthcare facility tells the patient about the Watsi. In order to be considered and participate patients need to be willing to share their stories with Watsi so that Watsi can in turn share the stories with individual donors wanting to help. The healthcare partners submit patient profiles to Watsi. And these are shared on the nonprofit’s website.
These profiles are reviewed, approved and posted by Watsi for donor funding. Once a patient is approved by Watsi their profiles remain posted until cost of treatment is fully funded. Medical treatments actually begin even before the patient profile is posted or funded because the nonprofit understands treatment of serious life-threatening medical needs is time sensitive.
Every treatment posted by the nonprofit is considered to have a high probability of success by the medical partner that submitted it. They trust their partners’ local knowledge and expertise to make that decision. Donors select which patient/treatment their contributions support. Use your social platforms to spread the word about their good work. To learn more, donate and get involved visit https://watsi.org