Medical Knowledge Institute Offers Beads of Hope

A South African woman models the beads made by the HIV-infected women who visit Dr. Robles' clinics. Photo by Patricia Steur for MKI.

They may appear to be simple strands of beads, but these handcrafted pieces of jewelry are powerful weapons against poverty, ignorance and disease. The multi-hued bracelets are the fruits of a grass-roots campaign to empower HIV-infected women in South Africa to make better health decisions for themselves and their children, while providing them marketable skills and financial independence. According to Harold Robles, co-founder and president of Medical Knowledge Institute (MKI), the YOELL® Collection may be the catalyst communities need to stop the cycle of HIV infection, violence against young women, and despair. He has seen the transformation in women who come to the MKI’s Health Information Centers in the townships of South Africa. And he is delighted to have launched a sustainable economic enterprise that partners local artisans with European designers and marketing experts. International sales of the YOELL® Collection — offered through the most exclusive shops of Holland, the United Kingdom and Germany — raise the funds that support and sustain MKI projects while providing incomes to women who would otherwise be jobless.

Dr. Robles, a native of the Netherlands known for his international humanitarian work, has devoted his life to promoting healthcare education and information as a human right. As a boy, he became fascinated with the work of Albert Schweitzer, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who worked as a medical missionary in Africa. More than twenty-five years ago, with the support of Dr. Schweitzer’s daughter Rhena, Dr. Robles founded the Albert Schweitzer Institute for the Humanities in the state of Connecticut, USA. Dr. Robles dedicated the work of his nonprofit organization to alleviating suffering and injustice in the world, and to creating a more equitable and sustainable future for our planet and its inhabitants.

Through this humanitarian agency, he provided aid to the people of war-torn Balkans; organized health education programs in underserved countries; established mother and child health clinics throughout Albania and introduced Albania’s first child development center in that country’s capital city; evacuated seriously injured children from Bosnia for life-saving medical treatment; championed humane living conditions for orphans in Georgia; created, at the request of former President Michael Gorbachev, the International Trust for Children’s Health Care in Russia to provide medical care for children with leukemia; provided dental care for 150,000 refugee children in Belgrade; and, in partnership with the Soros Foundation and other agencies, brought medical equipment, pharmaceuticals and medical supplies to more than 20 developing and transitional countries.

Dr. Robles retired as president of the Schweitzer Institute in 1998 and returned to the Netherlands, where he now directs his humanitarian work toward Africa. In 1999, he co-founded, with the support of his best friend Dr. Peter Bittel, the Medical Knowledge Institute a nonprofit organization associated with the World Health Organization and the United Nations and dedicated to the premise that healthcare is a human right, not a privilege. The programs of MKI are designed to improve the quality of healthcare and to promote humanitarian values through education and public health programs. Among the initiatives of the MKI is an HIV/ AIDS training program aimed at preventing vertical transmission of the virus in South Africa. This project, conducted in collaboration with the International Confederation of Midwives, the VU Medical Center in Amsterdam and the Dutch Red Cross, is aimed at informing and educating midwives and healthcare workers on how to prevent the transmission of HIV/AIDS from mother to child.

Dr. Harold Robles and community members celebrate the opening of the MKI Health Information Center in Khayelitsha, a township in South Africa.

It is here in South Africa, at MKI’s Health Information Centers, that something extraordinary is happening. Mothers are being educated about child development and childhood illnesses, their daughters’ safety and welfare, domestic violence and preventable diseases, including AIDS. Even more remarkable, women infected with HIV are being empowered to do something for themselves, their families and their communities.

“It is important that we empower people to take care of their own healthcare issues,” says Dr. Robles, “because there are so few doctors — one for every 190,000 people in Africa. We have to empower the local people, especially the women. The future of the African continent is in their hands.”

He describes the YOELL® jewelry venture as a project that started by accident three years ago. “A colleague board member and I felt that we had to do something for the many HIV/AIDS infected women coming to the centres for workshops,” Dr. Robles explains. “So we taught them to make bracelets out of recycled beads. We put them on the payroll and started selling the bracelets abroad. Half of the proceeds supports the clinics, and the other half goes to them. These women are living in shacks, but they all have bank accounts where their money is being deposited. Now we are sending famous Dutch designers to Africa to teach them to refine their craft.”

Along with their beading mastery, the South African women who earn certificates through workshop training are also passing along their newfound knowledge. In a country where orphaned adolescent girls commit suicide because they confuse the onset of menstruation with fatal internal bleeding, MKI’s Knowledge4Health Network sustains a grass-roots model of information sharing that can save lives.

“South African children are not dying of AIDS,” says Dr. Robles. “They are dying of curable diseases. If a child were to die of diarrhea in Holland, the authorities would close that clinic. Nelson Mandela, the former president of South Africa, is constantly imploring the international community to do more on health education. Education is the most powerful weapon we have to change the world.”

MKI currently operates four Health Information Centers in South Africa and hopes to increase that number to ten before the end of next year. The women employed are producing 500-700 bracelets a month, and the demand is growing with new markets opening in the United States. MKI’s achievement have recently been recognized by a nomination for the Gates Global health Award.

Since meeting INCTR President Ian Magrath at an oncology symposium in London, Dr. Robles anticipates introducing lessons about cancer prevention into his public health workshops.

“We will promote prevention and early diagnosis of breast cancer by offering simple education,” Dr. Robles says. He is also interested in INCTR’s palliative care initiatives for AIDS patients and will discuss this with Ian Magrath while they are exploring a working relationship between INCTR and MKI.

Marcia Landskroener for INCTR