In 1988 , inspired by a vacation that she took four years earlier to substandard medical facilities on Truk Lagoon , McCain founded the American Voluntary Medical Team ( AVMT ) . It was a non-profit organization that organized trips for doctors , nurses and other medical personnel to provide MASH-like emergency medical care to disaster-struck or war-torn developing countries such as Micronesia , Vietnam ( before relations were normalized between them and the U.S. ) , Kuwait ( arriving five days after the conclusion of the Gulf War ) , Zaire ( to help refugees from the Rwandan genocide ) , Iraq , Nicaragua , India , Bangladesh , and El Salvador . She led 55 of these missions over the next seven years , each of which were at least two weeks in duration . AVMT also supplied treatment to poor sick children around the world . In 1993 , McCain and the AVMT were honored with an award from Food for the Hungry
Rwandan genocide
Rwandan genocide
Cindy McCain