A major donation to Swiss Doctors has many benefits
- Personal advice and individual realisation: together we will find a project that you can identify with as a major donor. Because illness has many faces - and so does medical help. Your donation can save children's lives in Bangladesh, cure people suffering from tuberculosis or bring medical help to places where the nearest doctor is several hours away. No matter which project you wish to support, your major donation will always have a lasting effect.
- Transparency and trust: It goes without saying that we will keep you up to date on the development of the project you support, regardless of whether you donate a large sum once or take responsibility for a project over several years. So you always know what has been achieved with your large donation.
- Your money arrives: Your desire to help meets more than 30 years of experience in development co-operation. Together with our partner organisation German Doctors, we have been providing help that lasts since 1983!
We will be happy to advise you on how exactly you can help and where your support is most urgently needed. Together we will find out which form of financial commitment is right for you - such as a large individual donation, a foundation or a will in favour of Swiss Doctors.
Do you have any questions?
Dr. med. Christoph Niederberger will be happy to help you.
Our success stories:
This is how a major donation can make a difference
Philanthropy makes our world a better place. Some want to give something back, others want to create something lasting and contribute to a better world. Here we show you some concrete examples of projects that we have realised with the help of major donations. There are many potential projects where you can help.
New medical centre on Mindoro
2016: One of our two base stations for our Rolling Clinic on the Philippine island of Mindoro was in need of construction. Eaten away by termites and rotten due to the many floods in the rainy season, it was no longer functioning as a centre for treating tuberculosis, pharmaceutical storage room and overnight accommodation for patients and staff adequately. The decay progressed so quickly that we feared it would soon collapse.
We urgently needed a new roof over our heads so we could continue to provide basic medical care to the indigenous Mangyan people, who had been completely neglected by the state, and to provide professional care to our many patients with tuberculosis. To our relief, we quickly found a donor for one of two planned building wings. Dr Ausbüttel & Co. GmbH covered the costs of around 50,000 Swiss francs for the construction of an air-conditioned pharmaceutical storage room, the pharmacy, an office and a carport.
The commitment to finance the second construction phase - costing around 100,000 Swiss francs - came from an elderly lady who does not want her name mentioned here. Thanks to her the medical care of thousands of Mangyans on the Rolling Clinic Tour in the south of Mindoro is guaranteed for a long time!
Hope for thousands of patients with tuberculosis
For three decades, we have been fighting the spread of (multi-resistant) tuberculosis in Calcutta; since 2008, the Else Kröner-Fresenius Foundation (EKFS) has provided us with very generous financial support. More than one million Swiss francs have now been channelled to the treatment of TB patients and important preventive measures.
Some figures also prove the effectiveness of our TB work: between 2008 and today, around 24,000 patients have been seen at the six district tuberculosis centres. We diagnosed slightly more than 4,500 patients with tuberculosis. 1,600 patients were already so life-threateningly ill when they attended one of the TB centres that we immediately had to admit them to hospital.
Saving childrens lives together
We estimate that our medical aid has directly saved the lives of around 1,000 TB patients. We spared another1,500 patients complicated courses of the disease with potential lifelong disability and thus spared entire families an even harder fate than they were already suffering - e.g. long-term inability to work as a TB sufferer, children dropping out of school who suddenly have to contribute to their livelihood, exclusion from the family, etc. In line with our motto ‘Help that stays’, we want to pass on our knowledge and experience to local people. In our Calcutta project, eight Indian assistant doctors have now been trained as TB specialists and 60 local school graduates have been trained as nurses specialising in the care of TB patients. All this is only possible thanks to the comprehensive and long-standing support of the EKFS!
Little Sumon was lucky. Our employees picked him up a few months ago in a slum in Chittagong in a miserable state of health and saved his life. Sumon was severely underweight, suffered from diarrhoea and roundworm infestation, urinary tract infection and recurring respiratory infections. He was completely exhausted and had no appetite. In short, he was closer to death than life and urgently needed medical help! Sumon's mother Masuda (38), an illiterate woman with no income and completely emaciated herself, has four other children to look after. However, there was not enough money to survive since her husband, a rickshaw driver, died shortly after the birth of little Sumon as a result of a road accident.
At our Community Based Centre (CbC 1), we were able to provide sustainable help for Sumon, his siblings and Masuda. We provided basic medical care for all six of them and included them in our nutrition programme. The mother and the four older children got visibly better, but we worried about Sumon for months. His little body was so weak due to malnutrition that he was hardly able to resist the constantly recurring infections. Again and again, his survival seemed uncertain. The last major setback was a chickenpox infection - but in the end Sumon made it! Shortly before his second birthday, the little chap has almost reached normal weight. You can still see the strain on him, but his will to survive was so strong and Sumon is now tentatively starting to play with the other children at CbC 1.
Masuda has attended various training courses at the community centre on hygiene and how to prepare inexpensive yet nutritious meals, joined a mothers' self-help group and recently started earning a little money as a seamstress for the first time in her life. Thanks to the contacts she made at CbC 1, she no longer has to struggle through the tough everyday life all by herself, knows how to look after her children and herself better and where to get help in case of emergency. ‘I'm sure Sumon wouldn't be alive today without the help of Swiss Doctors. I am so grateful to the organisation!’
Training health workers
True to our motto ‘Help that lasts’, in addition to medical care, we also focus on training local staff. After all, the situation in our project countries can only be changed sustainably through the transfer of knowledge. With CHF 350, you can finance the one-year training of a health worker who can be there for the people in the long run.
Wir beantworten Ihre Fragen zur Großspende
What is a major donation?
There is no clear definition of a major donation because every organisation defines it differently. Basically, however, a major donation is a donation above average. A major donor is therefore someone who makes a one-off or cumulative donation of an above-average amount over a certain period of time, thus enabling the realisation of larger projects in a short time.
In order to express our special thanks and recognition, we advise and inform major donors individually and personally - after all, we also know that such a decision often has to mature and takes time.
Do I need to seek advice for a large donation?
No, you can entrust your large donation to us without prior counselling. However, we know from experience that such a decision often has to mature and takes time. We would therefore be happy to advise you personally. Just get in touch with us.
How does my large donation help?
Your large donation will help in various countries in the global South, where suffering and misery are part of everyday life and most people cannot afford to see a doctor. All our projects have a common goal: to sustainably improve healthcare for local people. In addition to acute care, our work therefore also includes preventive measures such as hygiene training or the professional training of local staff. We can make a big difference here with your large donation.
Specifically, your large donation can help in this way:
- A large donation of 1,000 franks will help to cure 10 patients of their life-threatening tuberculosis.
- With a large donation of 3,500 franks, you can provide the medical supplies for 1,100 medical treatments - and thus help numerous people.
Why does a large donation to Swiss Doctors make sense?
Everyone has the right to medical care - regardless of their origin. However, misery and illness are unfortunately part of everyday life, especially in developing countries. The doctors from Swiss Doctors work on a voluntary basis all over the world to help people in need. This is often a matter of life and death. With a large donation, you can make a big difference, help thousands of people at once and support us in creating a sustainable medical infrastructure.
With us, you can also be sure that every donation arrives and helps people on the ground in a sustainable way. By the way, all our doctors work on a voluntary basis. Every franc therefore supports the local people.
Can I help decide what a donation is used for?
We want to make absolutely sure that your large donation is used according to your wishes! If a specific project or region is particularly close to your heart, it is usually possible for us to use your donation there. Please contact us so that we can find a suitable option.
How is a large donation tax-deductible?
When it comes to tax deduction of large donations, you should bear in mind that the amount of deductible tax is limited - both for private individuals and for companies.
Even companies can only claim tax deductions for their donations up to a certain amount. A maximum of 20 per cent of the total amount of all revenues is permitted. The limit of four per mill of annual turnover plus wages and salaries is also possible.
Let us advise you on this as well. After all, your large donation does not have to be made all at once, but can also help people in need over several years.