Surgery and Healing in the Developing World - Dartmouth-Hitchcock

CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 3
A Commitment to Voluntary Health Care
Service
Donald C. Mullen
Mission hospitals in the developing countries supply critical help to those areas
where the governments financially are unable to sustain an adequate national medical
program. In much of mission work in the developing countries, volunteers have
always been a critical addition to that medical work. The call to medical mission
service has never been limited to permanent career position in hospitals abroad.
However in the past, generally, on the international level there has been the implicit
assumption that full-time missionaries are necessary and volunteers have played a
minor function. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the primary work
of the church abroad was accomplished through the efforts of career professionals
supported by either churches or other individuals, but the past 30 years there has
been an ever increasing move to volunteerism in these critical areas of international
health care. Now, as we move into the twenty-first century, it becomes increasingly
more important for us to search for more ways to volunteer our talents in the medical
mission fields of the world. Indeed, there is now great interest amongst physicians
and other health care personnel in the United States and Canada to be a part of
this service to our developing country friends in need.
Monetary constraints have limited the abilities of many church groups and other
organizations to maintain large numbers of career workers in these frontiers. But,
this is not all bad by any stretch of the imagination! This opens the door of opportunity
for all members of the medical profession to contribute in a major way to help
strengthen medical care in needy areas while at the same time gaining a personal
dimension in broadening themselves into whole people who care about the needs of
the less fortunate. Indeed, it has the potential of bringing missions closer to both
individuals and congregations and renewing the excitement and joy which can be
ours through relationships with our brothers and sisters around the world. Fresh
new perspectives gained from our partners in the developing countries may also lead
some of us to break out of a provinciality which in some areas may have weakened
our spirit.
Volunteer Medical Work
Medical work in the developing countries is particularly appropriate for expansion
of our volunteer networking. Health care work has always been effective in
bringing people together. People who see caring hands personally concerned about
their well being in mind, body, and spirit are much more open to closer personal
relationships. Recently in the medical profession we have been blessed with many
health care workers with a desire to serve in the capacity of short-term medical
Surgery and Healing in the Developing World, edited by Glenn Geelhoed.