UMMA Clinic featured in LA Times!

It grew out of the 1992 riots, a vision by a small group of Muslim medical students to bring charitable, high-quality healthcare to the needy residents of South Los Angeles.

Eleven years later, the UMMA clinic on Florence Avenue has served nearly 20,000 patients, the great majority of them non-Muslim. It has become a mainstay of its largely low-income neighborhood, sponsoring blood drives, literacy promotions and even tax return workshops, along with its medical services.

And in an era when Middle Eastern conflicts and terrorist attacks have often brought uncomfortable attention to America's Muslim communities, the clinic has become a source of considerable pride for Muslims in Southern California and nationwide.

"We believe this is really Islam at its best," said Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, an umbrella group for the region's mosques. "We are very proud of those who started UMMA and those who are continuing the work there."

• continue reading this article : LA Times: Health trumps faith differences at Muslim clinic
• UMMA Clinic Official website: www.ummaclinic.org
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Cholera Spreads in Iraq as Health Services Collapse

And it continues to get worse. The recent outbreak of cholera in northern Iraq has health officials scrambling for ways to treat those that are sick. With water shortages and lack of medicine the disease is spreading fast having already affected 5,000 people. I wonder just how bad officials will allow it to get until they attempt to do something about it. According to the article 10 people have died with the number expected to rise.

"The outbreak is among the most serious signs yet that Iraqi health and social services are breaking down as the number of those living in camps and poor housing increases after people flee their homes.

"The disease is spreading very fast," Dr. Juan Abdallah, a senior official in Kurdistan's health ministry, told a UN agency. "It's the first outbreak of its kind here in the past few decades."

"There is a shortage of medicines to control the disease and the focal point [the source of the disease] hasn't been identified yet," Dr. Dirar Iyad of Sulaimaniyeh General Hospital told the UN News agency Irin. Ten people have already died and he expects more deaths to occur "over the next couple of days as victims are already in an advanced stage of illness."

Read the rest of the story here: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2914413.ece