Where most needed

This very important option allows MBF the flexibility to use funds unrestricted, when and where they are most needed. This includes emergency relief to our overseas partners, mission interpretation, recruiting short term mission service participants, and MBF core support.

MBF interprets the international health work of PC(USA) and seeks support from congregations and individuals. MBF representatives provide mission education to Presbyterian congregations throughout the country, doing Minutes for Mission, presentations at special events and working directly with pastors and Mission Committees. Unrestricted gifts support the administrative needs of MBF, including salaries for staff, and communicating with the church at large.

Unrestricted gifts are also used to support the most urgent needs of our partners overseas. These gifts help to provide additional support for those with the greatest need. They are used to support health activities in over 100 mission sites in more than 30 countries. Unrestricted gifts even help to cover support for health related PC(USA) mission co-workers overseas. Each year these funds are used where they are most needed in making a difference in the lives of others. By designating your gifts "Where Most Needed", you are helping MBF be more flexible and responsive to changing needs as they arise.

Diseases of poverty

Malaria, tuberculosis, and AIDS kill millions each year. They are called the Diseases of Poverty because people who are poor are more likely to live in conditions leaving them susceptible to these fierce diseases and are least likely to have access to preventive education and inoculations or quality curative care. Yet, these diseases are treatable and preventable through education, medicines, nutrition, and such simple things as malaria nets. This option includes all of these various strategies for fighting these diseases and for improving equitable health care opportunities for everyone.

Missionary support

MBF helps to provide salary support and expenses for PC(USA) healthcare mission workers who are dedicated to serving people living in countries devastated by disease and poverty. Your support of missionaries is important and you may choose to sponsor a specific mission worker or fund new mission personnel positions.

The personal stories of these mission workers are varied, heart warming, and inspiring. They are our hands and feet, selflessly sharing God's love every day through ministries of mercy, healthcare, leadership, and training indigenous medical personnel. They often work in harsh conditions under the most trying of circumstances, in places such as Nepal, Pakistan, DR Congo, Haiti, Malawi, Kenya, India, Ethiopia, Turkey, South Africa, and more. They desperately need continued support for the important world-changing and life-saving work they do. This is what your gifts support when you designate them toward "Missionary Support".

Missionaries are called and gifted by God for service, but they are also ordinary people who need our prayers. Pray for them daily...

Sunday: For their personal relationships with God
Monday: For the challenges of their work
Tuesday: For their relationships with fellow workers
Wednesday: For their physical and emotional health
Thursday: For their ability to communicate in a different culture and language
Friday: For their families, friends, and homes
Saturday: For their safety and the environment in which they live and work

Women and children's health

Pregnant women and women with young children are at high risk. This option includes maternity care, education about breastfeeding, pap smears, well baby checks, infant healthcare, and minimizing transmission of HIV to newborns. In addition, there are millions of orphans that are in need of care. Community Based Child Care Centers provide loving day care, food, education, and spiritual development for these children. They are the most vulnerable in times of scarcity, war, and social disruption. Usually the bottom of the decision-making pyramid, they are left subject to the decisions and self-interest of others. Often excluded from avenues of communication, their voices are muted and ignored. Yet, as any community development worker will tell you, women are the most effective change agents when permitted and empowered; and children are every peoples' future.

Community health and development

This option helps to fund programs aimed at the long term development of whole communities. This can include rural clinics in areas far from hospitals, vaccinations, nutrition and clean water programs, cervical cancer screenings, or women’s income programs. Nutritional centers may be included, with programs that feed malnourished children and teach mothers about diet, hygiene, growing vegetables, or the nutritious and hearty Moringa tree.

Community health programs and supporting mobile clinics, working in rural villages, are the front line in the campaign to bring health and wholeness to poor and disadvantaged communities in developing countries. Along with early childhood vaccinations and prenatal care, these programs can include provisions for clean water, hygiene education, support for distribution of treatment medications for HIV/AIDS, and screening for evidence of malnutrition.

Community Health programs emphasize community participation through the training of health volunteers. Most often volunteers are women working along side mission hospital health workers providing the only health care most villagers receive. This infrastructure of both health workers and volunteers is the type of grassroots program which can reach those farthest from regular health care and impact programs for malaria prevention and anti-retroviral (ARV) distribution.

What does it take to keep these programs going? Vehicles, trained personnel and operating funds are vital. Imagine traveling less than 20 miles and it taking almost half a day. Imagine days on end of rain and mud half way to your knees. Imagine mothers and children gathering at earliest light and waiting in long lines for the mobile clinic to begin. Imagine few if any antibiotics available. Imagine only half of the team present today but the lines twice as long. This would be a regular day for a mobile clinic team.

Medical Benevolence Foundation is committed to supporting community health and development. Your help can ensure the continuance of mobile health clinics provided by mission hospitals and local church programs. The cost of vehicle maintenance and fuels, medicines and consumables, and health worker personnel costs is about $100 per village per month or $1200 per year. Continuous use and nearly impassable roads take a heavy toll on Mobile Clinic vehicles. Replacement cost for a vehicle, which varies by country, is estimated at $40,000 to $60,000.

By designating your gifts to "Community Health & Development" you help to ensure lasting changes that improve the lives of multitudes of people.

HIV/AIDS

HIV/AIDS is a vast epidemic destroying millions of lives, especially in poor and developing nations. Testing and education minimizes the spread of this disease. Treatment extends and enhances life for victims. Preventative treatments can reduce spread from infected mothers to newborns by 65%.

Because of stigma, silence and a lack of primary health care, HIV/AIDS continues to spread in third world countries. The stigma prevents people from being tested or admitting their HIV status. Many of those who are infected with HIV/AIDS do not have the means to receive treatment for their disease. Medical Benevolence Foundation is committed to helping mission hospitals and mission workers fight this epidemic.

Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT) Clinics treat the general public and are having a significant impact changing behaviors and reducing the rate of infection. Testing is often initiated with pregnant women and provides the opportunity to medicate during delivery and protect the unborn and uninfected child during childbirth. AIDS Control Programs throughout Africa are changing the face of this disease.

HIV/AIDS Education and Training Programs help to promote awareness as well as educate community leaders, medical personnel and patients about HIV prevention and transmission. MBF is helping to equip these programs with staff and appropriate materials and supplies. The rising availability of anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs is giving people hope and a positive reason for being tested. A growing number of countries have begun extending antiretroviral and other AIDS related medications through ARV Drug Programs, but these developments do not match the epidemic in scale or pace.

Please pray for our partners as they struggle to find ways to respond effectively to the HIV/AIDS threat, for those living with HIV/AIDS and for the children who have seen the virus devastate their parents, and who are eventually left orphaned.

Support for AIDS control programs can provide workshops for women and provide education in HIV/AIDS, gender issues, and income generating activities. There is also an urgent need for individuals who are qualified to perform AIDS testing and dispense ARV Drugs. By designating your gifts to "HIV/AIDS" you will be helping to fight the spread of this disease.

Indigenous healthcare training

While missionaries play a crucial role, it is more important for the self-sufficiency of a community that it have well-trained indigenous healthcare workers. This option helps to fund efforts to that end. It includes nursing schools, midwife programs, and scholarships. These make it possible to save and improve lives in rural areas where skilled medical care is scarce.

An essential component to primary health care and community outreach programs in developing countries is a well trained core of nurses and health workers. In developing countries such as Haiti, Malawi, and many others, nurses form the backbone of care.

In Malawi, for example, MBF provides funding for the training of health workers and nurses that are desperately needed to provide care for the growing number of AIDS patients and support the expanding distribution of anti-retroviral (ARV) drug treatments. MBF also provides funds for the Jodi McGill Scholarship Program at the Ekwendeni Hospital Nursing School. Jodi is a long term mission worker in Africa and a clinical instructor in the nurse training program.

Programs like these greatly influence the quality of nursing care, expanding the role of nurses in hospitals, community health programs and clinics in rural areas.

Medical Benevolence Foundation donors also support extended education and training of doctors and clinical officers at mission partners' hospitals. In many cases additional training provides the expertise to do procedures such as fistula repair, which dramatically change the quality of a patient’s life.

The average scholarship for a student nurse or health care worker is about $3,000 a year. By designating your gifts to "Indigenous Healthcare Training" you will be contributing to needs such as this.

Medical supplies and equipment

Many hospitals and clinics in developing nations are filled with the sick and injured but their storerooms are empty of the critical supplies and equipment needed to treat them. Shipment or purchase of hospital beds, laboratory equipment, surgical supplies, and medicines are always needed for saving and improving lives in impoverished nations. Through its partners, MBF supplies the funds needed for many of these supplies and their shipment.

A gift of support for shipping supplies and equipment often has the impact that is ten or twenty times greater than your gift. We in the U.S. are fortunate to live in abundance. At MBF we are grateful for the many U.S. institutions and donors who give used or surplus equipment and supplies that can be shipped to partners who need them urgently.

Hospital and clinic facilities

Hospitals in developing nations face funding crises due to insufficient funds to help people who have great need but who cannot afford to pay for services. This option may include orthopedic care empowering those with missing limbs and cataract removal. It can also support Payment for every type of treatment offered by a partners' hospital or clinic and for longer term care, or mobile clinics serving areas far from hospitals.

Charity care

This option helps to fund the construction, renovation, support, and maintenance of vitally needed hospitals and clinics in impoverished and developing nations. Without efforts in this area, there can be no facilities supporting the many other life-saving activities and programs MBF helps to fund.

From the beginning of Presbyterian mission effort, those in mission have sought to serve the whole person with Christ's saving love. Medical work and the hospitals and clinics necessary for quality treatment and care have been important in that effort. Presbyterians have built many facilities around the world, but many of them have had long service and need renovation. As medical science has progressed so has the need for updated and appropriate facilities.