Club Meeting - Guest Speaker from CCI

Members, visiting Rotarians and guests are welcome to join us online via Zoom for a presentation from Dr. Sherif Youssef from Coptic Care International (CCI).

Topic & Speaker: Dr. Sherif Youssef

Coptic Care International (CCI) is a not-for-profit organisation based in Melbourne, Australia and founded in 2016. Their mission is to empower impoverished communities to break the cycle by providing practical care, sustainable projects and medical aid.

CCI supports St Mina's Children's Home for children who have been abandoned, suffered family violence or orphaned and aims to give them a stable home, educational opportunities and hope for a better future.

The Losana Diabetes and Wellness Clinic was founded to give disadvantaged Fijians access to quality medical care and to improve their health and wellbeing.

From Tragedy to Hope

The Losana Diabetes and Wellness Clinic was named after 37-year-old Fijian mother Losana who cared for the disadvantaged children in St Mina's Children's Home. Sustaining a small cut to her hand, the wound grew in size, became infected then septic, due to her struggle with diabetes.

Losana's small cut lead to a fatal infection and she tragically died at the young age of 37 from septicaemia (blood poisoning).  This could have been prevented if her diabetes had been managed properly or prevented completely.

Her tragic death became the catalyst for setting up the Losana Diabetes and Wellness Clinic.

CCI has a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Fijian Ministry of Health and Nadi Hospital to provide medical aid and run clinics. 

Approximately 10 different groups have travelled to work under CCI medical mission. Each group has been made up of 5-10 people.

• Medical mission - involving doctors, specialists and allied healthcare professions such as pharmacists, nurses, podiatrists and dieticians
• Dental mission
• Optometry - the most recent mission saw approximately 550 Fijians assessed for vision and gave the gift of sight with over 500 pairs of glasses given to those in need after their assessment. 
• Dietetics - our dietician has created meal plans for the children in the home but has also gone to run educational sessions for the Fijian population on health eating. We have also distributed over 500 plates to give each person an idea of portion size.

Future plans

CCI plans to continue its medical work in Fiji with 3-4 missions per year in the hope of moving towards creating further opportunities to support impoverished regions of the Pacific. 

CCI has driven the construction of St Mina's Home which currently houses 19 children and is set to take on more orphaned or abandoned children if needed.

Across the road from St Mina's home, CCI has been able to negotiate the acquisition of a large parcel of land and developed concepts to construct a school.  A sketch drawing of the Master plan is available for review.

Funding needs:

• St Mina's home requires $15,000 per calendar month to sustain the needs of the children and carers.
• The Losana Diabetes and Wellness Clinic is funded by volunteers however several pieces of equipment would be beneficial to aid in the ongoing management of patients.
• The future school - this is a large scale project and requires significant capital with ongoing support.