Mongolia: A Country in Transition

   Mongolia is a country in the midst of a decade-long
transition of historic importance. This primarily rural country, with a population of 2.4 million people, has enthusiastically begun to reconstruct itself so as to successfully interface with 21st century life. Among all the former socialist countries it has made perhaps the most successful and untroubled transition to democracy and a free market economy since its establishment of a democratic statehood in 1990. For Mongolia, being nomadic and rural could be seen as a disadvantage. However, Mongolian legislators actually have the advantage of being able to simply skip past the "progressive and modern era" of the past 70 years and land squarely in today's post-modern world. Mongolia is not a wealthy country, yet has done much to help itself. What it needs the good will and financial aid of its friends in North America, Europe and Asia to become the Polar Star for all peoples who yearn for freedom, material progress and democracy.
   Half of Mongolia's population lives in Ulan Bator, the nation's lively and vibrant capitol. Another 30% lives in the other major cities. The balance - approximately 450,000 - still lives nomadically, maintaining contact with 'civilization' through small administrative centers called soums. Yet despite its move towards urbanization and technological progress, it has one of the poorest healthcare systems in the world. A cutting edge system of healthcare delivery could lift the confidence of all Mongolians, justifying all the changes to which they have recently committed, and all the inevitable hardships that come with fundamental change. In July of 1997 and again  in 2002, a team of ten doctors led by Dr. Richard  MacKenzie of the University of Southern California Keck  School of Medicine and Children's Hospital Los Angeles,  visited Ulan Bator to assess the healthcare delivery  system for children in the capitol. They found a spartan  physical plant and medical infrastructure; many  dedicated and practiced physicians trained under the  Soviet system; an underpaid staff with few resources;  and the lack of specialty care outside the largest urban  centers. One of the greatest hopes for improving  healthcare delivery in Mongolia is the opportunity to  utilize existing sophisticated high speed bandwidth  telecommunications to link Mongolian health care  centers such as the Maternal and Child Health Research  Center in Ulan Bator with the rest of the country and  the world. The healthcare officials that Dr. MacKenzie's  team consulted with agreed there are two urgent needs  they would like addressed:

"UBF Founder Arnold Springer and CaMMP
Co-Director Dr. Enkhjargal"

• (1) extend healthcare consultation capability between Ulan Bator and the doctors and clinics in the 345 soums to the MCH, and
• (2) extend consultation capabilities between MCH physicians and physicians in the USA.

  We would like to help Mongolia effect these changes. The Ulan Bator Foundation, in partnership with physicians from Childrens Hospital and Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, as well as consultants from the USC Advanced Telemedicine and Telecommunications Center (USC-ATTC), is proposing to extend telemedicine and telehealth approaches in a calculated bid to strengthen Mongolia's healthcare infrastructure in a single bound.
Founded by Arnold Springer in 1990, the Ulan Bator Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization (an NGO), that has worked tirelessly during the previous decade to promote cultural and medical information/technology exchange between the people of Mongolia and Southern California. Our project aims to find Mongolian based solutions that will dramatically improve patient care that 'work' for the Mongolian people within their special cultural prism. Our solutions include (1) creation of a Mongolian-US telemedicine consultation service using existing telecommunications systems (both public and private) that will immediately establish the modern case-based approach to patient care. Clinical observorships in US hospitals that will prepare Mongolian doctors to become the nidus around which Post Modern principles of pediatric practice, creating a national resource of qualified and well-educated pediatric professionals to guide the transition to 21st Century medical practice.
                                               Dr. Mackenzie observing an operation at MCHRC.

• Coordinate an international program to modernize the National Medical University curriculum so that Mongolian medical education is consistent with international standards.
• Continuation of our very successful Summer Medical Education & Exchange Program as a workshop based operation wherein Mongolian physicians participate in programs with US doctors.
• Establish an art exchange program between the children of Mongolia and the USA to enhance the work environment at MCHRC, and to establish an Art Therapy program in the hospital.

   Needless to say, this transformation won't be easy. Fortunately, MCHRC has the leadership to create a practical and visionary strategic plan to upgrade its telecommunications infrastructure, both within the hospital as well as between the hospital and external sites. We are confident that together we can make this change happen.
   Having let go of past obstacles, Mongolia is ready to bypass the hit and miss experiments of the second half of the 20th century and capitalize her future squarely on the models that have proven successful. We will be looking for you help to make this happen.