I just discovered this on Shelf Awareness, and felt it was worth passing on. I don’t have a name to credit the photo, so I’ll credit Operation Medical Libraries.
Operation Medical Libraries was created in response to nearly three decades of war and religious extremism in Afghanistan, which “have devastated medical libraries and crippled the educational system for doctors, nurses and other health professionals,” the New York Timesreported.
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The program “began modestly in 2007 with a plea for books from a U.C.L.A. medical graduate serving in the Army,” but “has since been embraced by 30 universities and hospitals, more than a dozen professional organizations and scores of individual doctors and nurses.”
Valerie Walker is the director of UCLA’s Medical Alumni Association and helps lead the project. She said the Taliban “not only burned the books, but they sent monitors into the classroom to make sure there were no drawings of the human body on the blackboard.”
Walker estimated that “27,000 medical texts have reached Afghanistan through Operation Medical Libraries, but she adds that the number is probably much higher. Donors can contribute directly by visiting the project’s website to find a military volunteer’s address, then shipping the books on their own,” the Timeswrote.
Norm and I frequently donate books to troops, but this undertaking is quite special.
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