I was introduced to Dr. Vijayalakshmi Bhatia, Paediatric Endocrinologist and Professor of Endocrinology at the Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPGI), Lucknow last year by Dr. Cijoy Kuriakose, Endocrinologist at the Christian Fellowship Hospital at Oddanchatram, in Tamil Nadu, where I had the privilege of working as a junior doctor between 1987 and 1990.
After email exchanges and a phone conversation, Dr. Bhatia invited me to speak to the DM and MCh (super-specialty postgraduate medical course) students at the SGPGI on Community Outreach, in her words, “to inform the participants that there are other ways to look at patient care than the straight-jacketed multispecialty hospital background they are used to and empower them to think of patients against the background of their family, society and environment”.
The talk was given in August 2021 and has been uploaded to the National Medical College Network – National Telemedicine Portal (Telemedicine Division) at the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India: https://nmcn.in/video_list.php
I thank Dr. Cijoy Kuriakose for introducing me and Dr. Vijayalakshmi Bhatia for inviting me to talk about the story of our work at Makunda. We pray that the talk will create awareness of the situation in needy parts of the country, especially among the poor and marginalized in remote rural areas.
The video of the talk can be viewed by clicking on the link below:
Christian mission hospitals today face a plethora of external and internal challenges. Some are flourishing inspite of the challenges, several have closed and many are just holding on.
In 1992, within a year of our marriage, my wife, Ann and me visited the Makunda Christian Leprosy & General Hospital in a remote rural part of Assam in northeast India. The hospital had been closed for the previous 10 years and faced severe problems that appeared almost insurmountable. We felt that God was leading us to join this hospital because it was in a remote rural thickly populated area with no other high-quality healthcare facility nearby – thereby having a high potential for transformational impact. We restarted medical work in March 1993 with a commitment to stay on till January 2022. (1) Today, Makunda is a thriving community bringing transformation in many areas, especially to the poor and marginalized.
How did a hospital with severe local problems and enormous challenges renew itself to become a transformer of many communities? It is all because of the grace of God and the hard work of numerous staff who joined us – especially those who had no obligation to do so and in the early years with all its difficulties.
Our main contribution to the work at Makunda was perseverance. Many mission-hospital workers give up too soon in the face of adversity – we simply stayed on, doing the best we could each day, plodding on till major changes started to happen. We also learnt to put ourselves in the shoes of the people we are called to serve as well as the people we had been given to work with. We thank God for each other – Ann and me complemented each other in our work, God had blessed each with an unique set of strengths and we played our roles, Ann with her gift of empathy and comfort and me with my gift of analysis and planning. As we go through Christian life, we yield ourselves to the Master, to be chipped and shaped into what He wants us to be, learning through trials and mistakes, becoming better each day. As a couple, Ann took on more of the soft role of prayer and personal involvement with people while I took on more of the hard role of being blunt and uncompromising when required. Both roles have their place in Christian management and must be administered in the correct doses.
A few days ago, I was invited by the Dr. Jyothsna M.J., Medical Superintendent of Unicorpus to speak to the “Healthcare Community Fellowship”. The Unicorpus Health Foundation was started in 2015 by 4 alumni of the Christian Medical College, Vellore and is today growing in many areas providing services to people in Hyderabad and beyond. I thank them for inviting me – may God bless their work and make them a blessing to many.(2)
Through our 29-year experience at Makunda, we have been guided by verses from the Bible in developing the correct attitudes. Successful mission hospital work happens when we are able to interact with our staff, students, patients and partners in the correct manner – this brings people to us, to join us as staff or use our services as poor patients, thereby fulfilling the mandate for which we exist. In the short video that follows ( a recording of my talk to the Healthcare Community Fellowship), I have reflected on key Bible verses, “golden drops of wisdom” that guided us to the right attitudes to adopt and which led to the major changes at Makunda. May these verses be a source of wisdom, strength and encouragement to others working in missions across the world and help them become ‘salt and light’ to the communities they serve.
When I did my undergraduate medical studies in Madras (present-day Chennai) in the early 1980s, I had the privilege of attending the St. Andrew’s Church (The Kirk). There, I met Pastor David Singh with whom I had many long talks over several years. He was one of my early mentors and introduced me to community health work at the church’s community health program at Thirupalaivanam village. Many years later (in 2007), Ann and me met him again in Richmond, Virginia where he was pastoring a church. This resulted in him visiting us in Makunda and to several years of partnership between his church and organization in the USA with our hospital – yearly staff and student retreats as well as financial support to the expansion of the hospital’s work in obstetrics and paediatrics.
The St. Andrew’s Church (fondly called the Kirk) was built by Scottish missionaries and has a rich legacy over 200 years. Its building and architecture are unique and many great men and women were associated with it over the two centuries of its existence. A brief account of its work has been presented as a documentary here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=780_668IGG0 – further details of the church and its ministry can be found on its website: https://www.thekirk.in/index.php
As part of the Bicentenary Celebrations of the church, March 2021 was dedicated as “Healing Month” with sermons centered around the healing ministry of the church. Ann and me were privileged to be invited to sing/speak at the morning service (with the theme verse John 15:16) on the 14th of March 2021. I used this opportunity to talk about my association with the church, share a personal testimony and challenge healthcare professionals and the church to missionary service. Ann and me thank the pastor and the church committee for inviting us to speak at this great church on “Medical Missions – Journeys in Faith”.
Mission hospitals were established by the church in remote and needy parts of the world where they transformed healthcare, bringing life and healing to numerous poor people who had no other options. Unfortunately, a large number are sick today and many have closed. We need a new impetus to healing sick hospitals and starting new ones in areas of need. May God place this vital burden on the hearts of church elders and the congregation so that the medical ministry of the church is a blessing to many. May young men and women in our churches today consider medical missionary work as a part of their career when God puts them into healthcare courses.
This video is made by the media team of the church and starts with organ prelude, worship led by my college junior Dr. Anita Chelliah and welcome by the Pastor, Rev. Isaac Johnson with announcements and introduction at 24:27 by the Secretary of the church and my school classmate, Mr. Dulip Singh. A short documentary on the “Healing Ministry in Chennai” is shown from 32:20 and my sermon starts at 52:47 with Ann singing the song, “His Eye is on the Sparrow” at 1:43:50. This is followed by intercessory prayer and the closing part of the program. You may listen to the entire program or parts of it by clicking on the link below:
In this post, I wish to introduce my blog-readers to Dr. Eby Daniel, a physician working at the Christian Fellowship Hospital at Rajnandgaon in the Chattisgarh state of India. He has started a podcast with each episode containing an interview with someone working in Christian missions and has called it “Chat with Eby”. There are also other playlists containing Christian meditations, Mission hospital videos etc. – you can see all of them on his YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9BiQMPpSkgIl2ecTtXJ8fg
I had the privilege of being interviewed by him in his latest podcast, responding to thought-provoking questions that are relevant to young medical (and other) people considering a career in missions.
In this interview, questions have been raised on several topics on which I have written earlier (references in brackets to earlier blog-posts and external links) including finding God’s will for our lives (1,2), early days at Makunda (3), strategic planning(4), the “Makunda Model” and poor-centric strategies (5,6), preventing “Mission Drift” (7), my experience with leprosy (8) and myocardial infarction (9), biodiversity documentation (10,11), choosing a life partner (12), excelling in studies (13) and concluding remarks on decisions relating to missions (14).
I hope that you will like listening to Eby’s channel and his interviews with other people – I’m sure that you will (like me) subscribe to his channel too. Please click on the video link after the following references to listen to this podcast containing Eby’s latest Chat – with me.
Christian mission hospitals should be God’s institutions of healing in a world of suffering. They have the potential to ‘close the gap’ in access to healthcare and provide high quality accessible services in the most remote and needy parts of the world to those who need them the most – the poor and marginalized.
In 1993, my wife Ann and me moved to a remote part of Assam in northeast India. We were led by verses in the Bible (Jeremiah 29:11-13 for me and Isaiah 6:8 for Ann) to what God wanted us to do with our lives. Over the following 27 years, God took us by our hands and provided us with all the encouragement, strength and wisdom required to transform a closed-down hospital to a thriving institution bringing healing and transformation to many surrounding communities. (1) We were not alone, God brought many committed staff to join us over the years to make this possible.
I was privileged to be invited to speak at six sessions on “Medical Missions” at the (virtual) South Asian regional conference of the International Christian Medical and Dental Association in November 2020. I am not an expert on medical missions but spoke from our experience in walking with God and witnessing a great transformation take place in our hospital.
The six talks can be viewed here along with a seventh talk given at the Annual Conference of the Allied Health Professionals section of the Christian Medical Association of India. Each link opens a blog-post with a short description of the content of the video that follows:
These talks are based on my experience of nearly 40 years in medical mission hospitals and medical college campuses. I hope that some of them may be applicable to every situation. May God be the source of all wisdom, strength and encouragement to the listeners to these messages and help us to plan our God-given work wisely.
Christian mission hospitals should be God’s institutions of healing in a world of suffering. They have the potential to ‘close the gap’ in access to healthcare and provide high quality accessible services in the most remote and needy parts of the world to those who need them the most – the poor and marginalized.
In 1993, my wife Ann and me moved to a remote part of Assam in northeast India. We were led by verses in the Bible (Jeremiah 29:11-13 for me and Isaiah 6:8 for Ann) to what God wanted us to do with our lives. Over the following 27 years, God took us by our hands and provided us with all the encouragement, strength and wisdom required to transform a closed-down hospital to a thriving institution bringing healing and transformation to many surrounding communities. (1) We were not alone, God brought many committed staff to join us over the years to make this possible.
I was privileged to be invited to speak at six sessions on “Medical Missions” at the (virtual) South Asian regional conference of the International Christian Medical and Dental Association in November 2020. I am not an expert on medical missions but spoke from our experience in walking with God and witnessing a great transformation take place in our hospital.
Besides running hospitals, our societies and trusts often run schools and colleges as well as nursing and paramedical training programs or have the right to start schools and colleges, this is a good option to consider as there are many benefits. Our founding documents may allow us to carry out many other activities as well.
We can run community health and development programs that benefit local communities either on our own or in partnership with other agencies. A lot of information can also be gained by community observations and this can be used to make our services more accessible to our target communities.
Telling others about the impact of God’s presence in our lives is important, especially when it is this spirit that has motivated us to our lives of service. Our motivation to talk about our personal experience as Christians is due to the peace, contentment and purpose in life that it has brought us and the desire to share this with others. We must however be aware of the changing rules of our nations and know that it is not by spending our material resources into this effort that we are able to talk about the life-changing experience of accepting Christ into our lives but by people experiencing a personal touch from Him. If we can simply live lives trusting and obeying God, opportunities for people to experience such a touch will come simply because God’s spirit lives in us and He will communicate His love for people through our lives.
Some hospitals have significant land and other assets which can be developed, not only for the institution itself but for surrounding communities. Research work can also be done on biodiversity documentation and environmental work, especially when many of our hospitals are located in remote areas where little work has been done over the years. Each hospital will have its own local opportunities which it should exploit.
We should also explore training opportunities to disseminate our learnings, these could be informal or formal and in partnership with other like-minded agencies.
Our hospitals are also good sites for research that is relevant to the low-resource settings in which we function. It is certainly a challenge to engage in research activities when we are hard-pressed for time in our busy hospitals but when situations improve and opportunities come, we should take them. Our learnings should be published so that they can benefit others too.
We should count the costs of missionary work – health issues, concerns about our families – parents and children, fear and security related issues, financial concerns, worldly disgrace – these are temporary trivial inconveniences that we should be willing to face in exchange for things that money cannot buy – contentment in this world and riches in heaven.
Medical missionary life is full of uncertainty and constant challenges but God will be by our side, strengthening and encouraging us and giving us the wisdom needed to take the right decisions.
We should work together to formulate plans to help sick hospitals recover and new ones started in areas of need. I have mentioned the TIRS project which could bring to attention of funders and volunteers the good work being done in remote low-resource settings by our mission hospitals.(2,3)
I close with some concluding thoughts. I hope that this series of talks were useful to those who have listened and there are some learnings that could be applied to different situations. May God bless us all.
Christian mission hospitals should be God’s institutions of healing in a world of suffering. They have the potential to ‘close the gap’ in access to healthcare and provide high quality accessible services in the most remote and needy parts of the world to those who need them the most – the poor and marginalized.
In 1993, my wife Ann and me moved to a remote part of Assam in northeast India. We were led by verses in the Bible (Jeremiah 29:11-13 for me and Isaiah 6:8 for Ann) to what God wanted us to do with our lives. Over the following 27 years, God took us by our hands and provided us with all the encouragement, strength and wisdom required to transform a closed-down hospital to a thriving institution bringing healing and transformation to many surrounding communities. (1) We were not alone, God brought many committed staff to join us over the years to make this possible.
I was privileged to be invited to speak at six sessions on “Medical Missions” at the (virtual) South Asian regional conference of the International Christian Medical and Dental Association in November 2020. I am not an expert on medical missions but spoke from our experience in walking with God and witnessing a great transformation take place in our hospital.
The video starts with a short clinical illustration to show why we need to have all our faculties focused on our work lest we miss a vital observation (a point discussed in the previous day’s question and answer session).
Where will our staff come from? – this is a burning question facing most mission hospital leaders. We cannot wait for people to apply for jobs in our hospital, we need to get involved in the lives of medical, nursing and paramedical students in their colleges. Only then will we have sufficient numbers of high-quality committed staff joining us. From experience 33 years earlier to the present, I talk about suggestions on how this can be done. A slip of the tongue at 6.30 – in the illustration, I meant “my mother” not “my wife”!
Mission minded students start their missionary work as students in colleges, I have mentioned several observations on how good practices lead to transformational impact in college fellowships.
What about staff who join our hospitals today? How can we engage with them so that they live and work to their full God-given potential? How do we retain committed staff in our institutions? How can we make our hospitals professionally challenging places for our staff – where they feel that their skills and knowledge are being fully utilized?
How can we provide a pleasant and fulfilling life on campus to our staff? I close the session with a story that illustrates how God can surmount the greatest obstacles and provide us with the staff we need.
Christian mission hospitals should be God’s institutions of healing in a world of suffering. They have the potential to ‘close the gap’ in access to healthcare and provide high quality accessible services in the most remote and needy parts of the world to those who need them the most – the poor and marginalized.
In 1993, my wife Ann and me moved to a remote part of Assam in northeast India. We were led by verses in the Bible (Jeremiah 29:11-13 for me and Isaiah 6:8 for Ann) to what God wanted us to do with our lives. Over the following 27 years, God took us by our hands and provided us with all the encouragement, strength and wisdom required to transform a closed-down hospital to a thriving institution bringing healing and transformation to many surrounding communities. (1) We were not alone, God brought many committed staff to join us over the years to make this possible.
I was privileged to be invited to speak at six sessions on “Medical Missions” at the (virtual) South Asian regional conference of the International Christian Medical and Dental Association in November 2020. I am not an expert on medical missions but spoke from our experience in walking with God and witnessing a great transformation take place in our hospital.
The video (link below) starts with a few comments on questions raised by participants in the previous day’s session (this can be skipped by starting the video at 04.30). The first comment is on cost vs benefit of different healthcare interventions. I have explained the expenditure against population covered using 3 slides – maybe difficult to understand without the background discussion! This is followed by a few points on Christian private practice and marriage before the talk on leadership and human resource management.
In this third session, we will look at leadership in mission hospitals – please skip to 04.30 on the video. In this talk, I have spoken about ‘Title’ and ‘Towel’ leaders, management/governance structure, suggestions for recruitment and retention of staff and succession planning.
I have made a few references in the session – on marriage (2), online course on governance in health (3)
Christian mission hospitals should be God’s institutions of healing in a world of suffering. They have the potential to ‘close the gap’ in access to healthcare and provide high quality accessible services in the most remote and needy parts of the world to those who need them the most – the poor and marginalized.
In 1993, my wife Ann and me moved to a remote part of Assam in northeast India. We were led by verses in the Bible (Jeremiah 29:11-13 for me and Isaiah 6:8 for Ann) to what God wanted us to do with our lives. Over the following 27 years, God took us by our hands and provided us with all the encouragement, strength and wisdom required to transform a closed-down hospital to a thriving institution bringing healing and transformation to many surrounding communities. (1) We were not alone, God brought many committed staff to join us over the years to make this possible.
I was privileged to be invited to speak at six sessions on “Medical Missions” at the (virtual) South Asian regional conference of the International Christian Medical and Dental Association in November 2020. I am not an expert on medical missions but spoke from our experience in walking with God and witnessing a great transformation take place in our hospital.
In this second session, we will look at areas of medical mission work that are not taught in medical college. How do we take stock of the situation in our hospitals and make wise plans for the future?
At the end of the session, I have answered questions from the group. Unfortunately, the recording does not include the questions (only the answers). The questions are:
How do we manage burnout in our staff? – sometimes we really are physically exhausted beyond out capacity but often there are other reasons.
How do we manage differences in opinion with other senior officers of the institution? – we can’t win arguments, but we need to win hearts.
What can we do if there are irreconcilable differences with our partners? – we can list out our differences and give time for change, sometimes we may need to break the partnership.
What do you do when workloads become too much to bear? – God will give strength from above – through verses, songs, people…
Do we need to be serious about our work at all times, can we entertain ourselves too? – it is a tremendous responsibility to treat patients, their lives are in our hands and we cannot afford to be careless.
Allied Health Professionals (pharmacists, laboratory and other technicians, optometrists, neurophysiologists etc.) are often the unheard and unseen background support system of our mission hospitals. I thank the Christian Medical Association of India for inviting me to speak to them at their 2020 Annual Conference for Allied Health Professionals. I have spoken from our experience at the Makunda Christian Leprosy and General Hospital over 27 years – a testament to God’s blessings and the hard work of numerous co-workers (1). I hope that this video is an encouragement to allied health professionals (and students) in Christian mission hospitals all over the world. May God bless them and make them a blessing to many. I apologize for short segments of the recording that are inaudible (it was recorded over the internet).
The Sparrow's Nest 