Doctors and nurses in war-torn Iraqi cities and the United States can reconnect through sattelite once again, with federal funding restored to a non-profit organization founded by an SF State professor.

Just seven months after it launched, the non-profit organization World Internet Resources for Education and Development (WiRED International) suspended its telemedicine program in September 2006 when the U.S Department of State abruptly withdrew its funding.

However, according to founder and SF State communications professor Gary Selnow, WiRED will reestablish its videoconferencing centers in Iraq with a new grant of $220,000 from the State Department—still just 45 percent of the program’s original government subsidy, he said.

“This seed money will be enough to buy satellite time,” said Selnow. “We’ll be able to stay in touch with Iraqi doctors, start checking out equipment, and run a latest-needs assessment in Iraq.”

Victoria Doward, a 23-year-old SF State graduate student who worked with the institute during a fundraiser said Selnow and his project are brilliant.

“It’s an excellent program,” she said, “They are bringing healthcare to a country where things are devastating.”

Selnow said he hopes to get new sessions up and running by early October, reconnecting with doctors and nurses in hospitals around Baghdad, Basra, Erbil and Mosul.

To accomplish that, the organization will spend $100,000 of its budget just purchasing around-the-clock satellite service from a company in Dubai. Funds will also go towards reestablishing ground coordination in Iraq and employing an tech support specialist to travel from Basra to other cities.

“It’s a pretty complicated project in a place you can’t travel,” said Selnow, “It would be easier if you were doing this in Idaho.”

Selnow said his organization had trouble finding private investors to keep the project running after the initial funding was cut.

“It’s impossible to raise money for Iraq,” said Selnow. “The U.S. is spending $10 billion a month in Iraq. If you break it down, less than two seconds a month would cover this program.

SF State’s Marian Wright Eldeman Institute helped back the project by pairing WiRED with physicians from UCSF and the SF State nursing department. The institute has also held fundraisers to support WiRED’s previous programs in other conflict regions, such as Bosnia.

Over the past few years, student assistants at SF State worked in converting medical documents to electronic formats that are compatible with current Iraqi computer technology.

During WiRED’s seven-month run last year, faculty from the SF State school of nursing held several video-conference sessions with nurses in northern Iraq.

“It was a very rewarding experience,” said Eldeman Institute Director, Charlotte Ferretti. “Instructors here were able to engage in a great dialogue that provided specific context for nurses in Iraq.”

According to Ferretti, who has also taught nursing for 15 years, the conferences were designed to develop a master’s degree curriculum for nursing in Erbil, which is home to one of Iraq’s only undergraduate programs in nursing.

The nursing department plans to continue educating and training Iraqi nurses throughout the project’s next stint.

With WiRED’s new grant, Selnow said that the Iraq program will be able to operate for another six months. In that time, he said he hopes to improve the Iraqi medical system by enabling doctors and nurses in Iraq to share information amongst themselves.

“They can throw a switch talk to each other” said Selnow. “(The program) is really about bringing people together.”