When a young Iraqi woman developed life-threatening complications during her pregnancy last year, the remedy came from an strange source: e-mail.

Fearing they would have to abort the baby to save the mother, her doctors asked for help from the Swinfen Charitable Trust — a British charity that urls up doctors in wartorn or impoverished nations with Western specialists through the World Wide Web.

The Iraqi doctors e-mailed details of their patient’s condition to the charity, which forwarded them

to an obstetrician in Britain and an anaesthetist in Spain who were part of the trust’s network of volunteers.

“After two and a half weeks, we had a healthy mother and baby go home,” said Lord Swinfen, who founded the charity with his wife. “It is amazing what a few e-mails and digital pictures were able to do.”

Since 1998, the Swinfen Charitable Trust has worked worldwide, from Antarctica to the Solomon Islands. […]

Orginal post by dhiram