Alison Curtis, wife of visiting History Professor Perry Curtis, and Rebecca Eldredge '94 are working to bring Bosnian refugee children to the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center for long-term medical treatment.
If DHMC executives agree, the United Nations High Commission on Refugees will work with the Bosnian government and the United States to airlift severely injured children out of war zones in the former Yugoslavia into America, said Curtis.
Similar programs are currently in place in Maine, and may serve as a model for the, Curtis said.
She said she hopes to use two beds at the hospital for long-term treatment of injured children from the war zone. "What we're looking at is the long-term injury, probably many of them will be orthopedic," she said.
Children who need immediate medical care are taken to hospitals in Europe, but those who need long-term rehabilitative care may be taken to the United States, Curtis said.
The DHMC's resources in orthopedic and pediatric medicine make it a practical recovery site for children with injuries like broken bones, Curtis said.
The State Department has agreed to pay all living expenses for the siblings and at least one parent of the refugee children, but the hospital would have to pay medical costs for the victims, Curtis said.
Curtis declined to divulge the names of DHMC administrators who will decide this week whether the hospital will agree to the plan.
Curtis, who volunteers three days a week at the hospital, said working at the DHMC gave her the idea to bring war victims to the hospital.
"It simply dawned on me: why haven't we thought of this?" she said.
Rebecca Eldredge '94, one of the initiators of a Spring term seminar on refugee issues, said she plans to contact students at the beginning of next term to garner help for the effort.
The project would be "a perfect opportunity for people to get involved and rise above the fact that we're in the New Hampshire wilderness," Eldredge said.