Doctors volunteer so patients get care at Salam Medical Center in Egypt

Dr. Freddy Elbaiady, Director of Salam Medical Center in Egypt remembers when an old man came to him requesting a duplex ultrasound scan for his leg arteries. When Dr. Elbaiady explained that the hospital did not have such an expensive machine, the old man began to cry, knowing that Salam Medical Center was most likely the only place he could find such a procedure at low or no cost.

Dr. Elbaiady recounted the story in a recent visit to the Medical Benevolence Foundation offices in Houston during a tour of PC(USA) churches. He says he came to the U.S. to tell people how God honored the efforts of a small 40-member church to foun...read more >>

MBF’s CFO visits Haiti after nursing school loses accountant in quake

After the previous accountant at FSIL School of Nursing was killed in Haiti’s earthquake, MBF offered Fred Kingston, MBF’s Chief Financial Officer, to assist their new accountant with the annual audit. Upon return from his recent trip to Haiti, Kingston reports that thousands of people are still living in tents on the school grounds. There is much rubble in the streets, but the rains have encouraged lush growth.
 
Kingston says that six months since the devastating earthquake, students at the nursing school are just now returning to live in their dormitory. Even though the dormitory has been declared sturdy and ...read more >>

Encouraging first results of mosquito spraying in Nkhoma, Malawi

Last fall, Nkoma Hospital, in Malawi sponsored a campaign to reduce the mosquito population in the area and lower the alarming number of malaria cases, particularly in children. Nkoma is one of the hospitals of our partner, the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (CCAP). The campaign included spraying the doors and walls of homes in ten villages of the Nkoma community with a special insecticide. People from each village were given special training for the job. The spraying was in addition to the use of bed nets recommended by Nkoma Hospital.

Now the evaluation of the first spraying in the campaign has been completed, showing ...read more >>

Skilled IT volunteers needed for DR Congo Nursing School

For the past ten years, the Nursing and Lab Technology School of the Christian Medical Institute (IMCK) in DR Congo has had a dream: to establish a computer skills training classroom and provide internet access for both student education and faculty research. Now, in God’s perfect timing, everything has come together to help this dream come true—everything except people with the skills to help get the system working according to the school’s needs.

Funds for fiber-optic cable and used network equipment and computers have been donated from the home church and former hospital employer of PC(USA) co-worker at IMC...read more >>

Congo Nursing School Dream Coming True

For the past ten years, the Nursing and Lab Technology School of the Christian Medical Institute (IMCK) in DR Congo has had a dream: to establish a computer skills training classroom and provide internet access for both student education and faculty research. Now, in God’s perfect timing, several factors have come together to help this dream come true.

First, because of the severe and frequent lightning storms in this area of Congo, fiber-optic cable, rather than wire, must be used. Funds for the cable came through First Presbyterian Church of Yuma, AZ, the home church of Dr. John and Gwenda Fletcher, PC(USA) co-workers ...read more >>

Medical Mission Co-workers find a home away from home

Paul Heller had already served as a PC(USA) pastor for 35 years when he and his wife, Darlene, decided to take on a three-year assignment at a nursery for AIDS orphans in Malawi. Paul is director of Ministry of Hope Crisis Nursery in Mzuzu and Darlene is the matron. Together with their staff they have loved and cared for, and saved the lives of, hundreds of infants.

Ministry of Hope Crisis Nursery was founded in 1999 by Fletcher Matandika, a young Malawian who was alarmed at the growing number of AIDS orphans in the country. Today, Malawi is faced with caring for up to 2 million orphans. It’s clear that the Hellers and th...read more >>

Helping the Pakistan poor help themselves to better health

People packed into the slums of Lahore, Pakistan suffer from common ailments  like hypertension, diabetes and cardiovascular problems and infectious diseases such as typhoid, malaria and gastroenteritis. They often watch their newborns and infants die due to malnutrition and low birth weight. All of these medical problems are treatable, but most of these poorest of the poor have no access to medical care.

That’s why our partner, United Christian Hospital (UCH) in Lahore, Pakistan, launched a program to teach the people how to stop illness before it starts, with an emphasis on the health of mothers and children. In a ...read more >>

The "Older Orphans" of Africa

The HIV/AIDS pandemic has not only robbed children of their parents, it has robbed older parents of their adult children. Janet Guyer, PC(USA) HIV/AIDS consultant for Southern Africa, calls these parents the “older orphans” because, at an age when they would expect to be cared for by their children, they are parenting their grandchildren.

“Southern Africa has the highest HIV/AIDS infection rate in the world,” Janet Guyer reports. “Everyone is affected in some way by the pandemic.”

Janet works with our partner churches in South Africa who are facing the needs of these &...read more >>

Mulanje Hospital in Malawi faces measles epidemic

Measles is a deadly disease in Malawi, as it is in most developing countries. That’s why Mulanje Hospital is bracing itself for an outbreak of this respiratory viral infection. Already, enough cases of measles have been reported for the area around the hospital to be designated a measles outbreak, and some children have died.

To handle the outbreak, Mulanje Hospital has launched a campaign in highly risky communities in the district, targeting children from 9 months to 15 years for vaccinations. One area targeted is a village where several children had measles and parents refused to take them to a hospital for treatment. ...read more >>

How God used a hearing loss to make a missionary

Growing up with a hearing loss, Nathaniel (Than) Veltman didn’t know that God would use that loss to lead him to Ethiopia as a PC(USA) mission co-worker and give him an unusual perspective on cross cultural differences.

“As an outsider in an audio-normative society,” Nathaniel says, “I have been forced to communicate cross-culturally. I see the restoration of my hearing [he has two cochlear implants] as a glimpse of what God is doing in the world: God is at work restoring it and making it whole, healing broken relationships and broken bodies. I have come to understand that my experiences growing up ...read more >>