About Us

The International Medical Alliance (IMA) was founded by Ines Allen, a resident of Rancho Mirage, California. Ines began working for various philanthropic causes in the 1980's and discovered that the work she found to be most satisfying was her volunteer efforts for the Flying Samaritans, a group of pilots and doctors whose goals it is to provide medical care to the indigent residents of Mexico. Ines dreamed of returning to Ecuador, the country of her birth, to provide the same type of medical care for the country's poorest residents, a third of whom would never receive medical care for their infirmities without an intervention from volunteer medical professionals.

IMA, designated as a not-for-profit entity by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service in 2002, has organized five trips to Ecuador with teams of plastic and orthopedic surgeons, doctors in a variety of specialties, dentists and support staff. Thanks to the cooperation of the government and institutions of Ecuador, they work in a temporary clinic/surgical center where they have provided medical and dental services to 20,000 Ecuadorians since IMA's inception.