HealthUSA: Emergency recall: Bad ground beef sparks recall of product in 5 states

Before a mass poisoning can take further effect, I'm grateful that the USA and Canada have emergency operations in bad food cases organized and always ready to 'roll.'

— Albert Gedraitis

Christian Science Monitor (Jan31,2k13)

Ground beef recall 

linked to illness 

in five states

Ground beef recalled last week may be responsible for symptoms experienced by 16 people in Michigan, Arizona, Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin who ate the recalled ground beef.

by Mike Stobbe, Associated Press / January 28, 2013

NEW YORK

Ground beef recalled last week is linked to 16 cases of salmonella food poisoning in five states, say federal health officials.

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No one has died, but half were hospitalized. Most of the illnesses have been in Michigan, but a few cases were scattered in Arizona, Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin.

RECOMMENDED: Six major food recalls

Seven people ate a raw ground beef dish called kibbeh (kib-BEH') last month at a suburban Detroit restaurant that wasn't identified. Health officials say consumers should not eat uncooked meat.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the cases have been linked to last week's recall of more than 1,000 pounds of ground beef from two Michigan businesses, Troy-based Gab Halal Foods and Sterling Heights-based Jouni Meats.

World gears up to fight Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) to make the world — God's world an NTD free planet

17 culprits are busy every day and nite undermining the health of our world's — God's world's — people under the burden of sicknesses most of us can only imagine.  Oh, we may have heard the names of some of these life-takers and society-wreckers which entrench the cycle of poverty and neglect for millions of people today, but the cost of the immiseration of these people on the structures of family life and wellness are staggering beyond imagination.  A movement has been initiated and is active already since January of last year to control, eliminate, and eradicate 10 of the 17 by the year 2020.  Get more information on the London Declaration against NTDs.  Download the 1st Annual Report on the London Declaration on NTDs.  This fact-filled report that is good for use in Christian schools is available in several languages.  All the facts in this blog-entry, and most of the text, are derived / quoted from Business and Human Rights, and the unprecedented group of partners centered around the World Health Organization's leadership which has produced the download above.  Included are GlaxoSmithKline and 12 other global pharmaceutical companies along with the World Health Organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other groups.   B&HR:  "The progress our coalition reports today includes that: We fully met requests for 1.12 billion treatments for NTDs…29 countries began receiving drugs to treat or prevent soil-transmitted helminthes, resulting in an almost six-fold increase in treatments….There was increased funding and collaboration to improve outcomes….Two NTD diagnostic tests received regulatory approval."

Perhaps best of all:  WHO's own Executive Board which just met in Geneva, Switzerland, on January 29, 2013, has taken heart and has recommended to the full World Health Assembly to meet in Geneva in May 2013, that all 17 of the 'negelected tropical diseases' (NTDs) — beyond the current and heroics-demanding 10 — come under the mandate of 'prevent, control, eliminate, eradicate' .... 

— Albert Gedraitis

Use this code to cut-and-paste, or go to refWrite Backpage where the video will embed directly.
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World Health Organization’s roadmap: 

The path to a world free of Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs)

What does 'NTD-free' mean? 

WHO’s Roadmap for Implementation, put forward in January 2012, outlined bold targets for the control and elimination of 17 NTDs. In January 2013, WHO launched its second report (available at www.who.int/neglected_diseases) with updated information on the specific targets for each disease and what needs to be done to reach the 2020 goals. Below are the 10 NTDs targeted for control, elimination or eradication as part of the London Declaration on NTDs.

•  Blinding trachoma

•  Chagas disease

•  Guinea worm disease

•  Human African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness)

•  Lymphatic filariasis (LF or elephantiasis)

•  Leprosy

•  Onchocerciasis (river blindness)

•  Schistosomiasis (snail fever or bilharzia)

•  Soil-transmitted helminthiasis (STH or intestinal worms)

•  Visceral leishmaniasis (kala azar)



Over the past year, there has been exciting progress:

•  Pharmaceutical partners supplied 1.12 billion treatments
meeting the increased requests from endemic countries.

•  Donors committed funds to support integrated NTD
programs, scale up and expand existing programs,
increase resources available for mapping, improve
program strategies through research, and develop new
tools.

•  More than 40 endemic countries developed multi-year
integrated NTD plans, and Nigeria, Brazil, Cameroon,
Honduras and Burundi launched their plans.

•  Oman became the first previously endemic country to
verify the elimination of trachoma.

•  Partners developed a comprehensive London Declaration 
Scorecard, presented in this report and online, to
promote accountability, transparency and evidence
based prioritization. This scorecard tracks the delivery
of London Declaration commitments, highlights key
milestones and targets, and helps identify priority action 
areas to ensure that 2020 goals are met.

With these new drug supplies and integrated NTD plans,
programs are ready to scale up. Building on these
promising beginnings, new partners and resources are 
urgently needed to be on track toward achieving the WHO 
goals. By redoubling our efforts, together we can empower
communities to break the cycle of poverty and neglect by 
overcoming the burden of NTDs.

Debate at Houses of Parliament, London, UK, to advance professional care for people who don't want the homo attractions they sometimes experience

If a person finds feelings of attractions to another person/s if the same-sex, shoud the therapy organizations with the enforcement of government be able to prevent such therapies from taking place? Yes, say some.  No one was a right to have such feelings and not want them.  No, say others.  A person can by annoyed or severely disturbed by the recurrence of such feelings, not least of all having become aware of them after years of marriage and sharing the raising of children.  If one party to the marriage insists there is nothing to do but break-up the marriage, then the other parent and the children woud seem to have no say in the matter.  But that's putting the cart before the horse.  What if there is no marriage?  No children?  Does a single person have the mere right to want to change these attractions and any desires that come with them?  Can medical professionals and other counsellors to persons having these feelings, attractions, desires determine absolutely what nature brings to a person's consciousness?  Can a person assert an interest over against nature in order to prevail over what seems to be its intentions for them?  What is the legitimacy of medicos, psychiatrists, psychologists, psycotherapists, lay counsellors with training and experience in offering to try to help individuals who want to ameliorate these unwanted feelings?  What is the legitimacy of professional associations in trying to block trained and certified professonals who offer to help as best they can persons who suffer from such unwanted feelings?  How are the issues of personal freedom best formulated so that all parties to these debates and issues have a common rule of law to which they can have recourse with a reasonable hope of basic fairness?

— Albert Gedraitis

January 30, event, London, England UK:

Crucial debate on therapy for 

unwanted same-sex attraction

Please join us on Wednesday (30 January, 2013) at a debate in the Houses of Parliament on the 

legitimacy and freedom to offer therapy 

for those with unwanted feelings of same-sex attraction.

The debate is so important because at stake is the freedom of people to choose to have this kind of therapy if they want it.

Your attendance at the debate, if you can make it, will be much appreciated.

The debate is being held ahead of an inquiry into a complaint against Dr Mike Davidson, a strong supporter of change therapy for people suffering with unwanted feelings of same-sex attraction. However, many professional bodies are banning such therapies.

Peter Tatchell and Professor Michael King will be taking part in the debate. Peter Tatchell and Professor King are well known advocates for gay rights.

The event runs from 10.30am to noon and will take place in 

Committee Room 11, 

Houses of Parliament, 

Westminster, London, England,

UK.

Speakers:

Prof Michael King (Dir, Mental Health Sciences Unit, University College London)

Mr Peter Tatchell (Human Rights Campaigner/Advocate) 

Dr Joseph Berger (Consultant Psychiatrist, Royal College of Psychiatrists, Canada)

Dr Mike Davidson (Director, Core Issues Trust)

You need to register for this event. 

To do so, please email: peter.mcilvenna@christianconcern.com 

or call Peter on 07546 497 790.

Food & Drug Admin to add limits to painkiller prescriptions

There's another battle brewing between easy-prescribers and hard-liners that has to do with swing of the pendulum from easy-going approaches to pain reduction allowing more painkillers, and hard-liners who often seem to want to increase the level of pain among sufferers in society, the sadist approach.  Mature persons, certainly with no close family, shoud have the right to Death with Dignity at a time and place of their own choosing.  Under such a condition, some might be more likely to overuse their painkillers because of a blurred sense of time of last use, or unrelenting pain, or not so much interest in dragging their life out in such reduced circumstances.  I tend to favour the easy-goers; I can't see how physicians and surgeons, let alone pharmacists, have any right or business increasing pain by withholding substances needed to reduce and terminate it.

-- Albert Gedraitis


New York Times (Jan28,2k13)

Food & Drug Administration (USA) likely to add limits on Painkillers

By SABRINA TAVERNISE

Published: January 25, 2013 357 Comments

Trying to stem the scourge of prescription drug abuse, an advisory panel of experts to the Food and Drug Administration voted on Friday to toughen the restrictions on painkillers like Vicodin that contain hydrocodone, the most widely prescribed drugs in the country. 

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration

Related

• New York City to Restrict Prescription Painkillers in Public Hospitals’ Emergency Rooms(January 11, 2013)

Readers’ Comments

Readers shared their thoughts on this article.

• Read All Comments (338) »

The recommendation, which the drug agency is likely to follow, would limit access to the drugs by making them harder to prescribe, a major policy change that advocates said could help ease the growing problem of addiction to painkillers, which exploded in the late 1990s and continues to strike hard in communities from Appalachia and the Midwest to New England. 

But at 19 to 10, the vote was far from unanimous, with some opponents expressing skepticism that the change would do much to combat abuse. Oxycodone, another highly abused painkiller and the main ingredient in OxyContin, has been in the more restrictive category since it first came on the market, they pointed out in testimony at a public hearing. They also said the change could create unfair obstacles for patients in chronic pain. 

 Painkillers now take the lives of more Americans than heroin and cocaine combined, and since 2008, drug-induced deaths have outstripped those from traffic accidents. Prescription drugs account for about three-quarters of all drug overdose deaths in the United States, with the number of deaths from painkillers quadrupling since 1999, according to federal data.

The change would have sweeping consequences for doctors, pharmacists and patients. Refills without a new prescription would be forbidden, as would faxed prescriptions and those called in by phone. Only written prescriptions from a doctor would be allowed. Distributors would be required to store the drugs in special vaults.

The vote comes after similar legislation in Congress failed last year, after aggressive lobbying by pharmacists and drugstores.

“This is the federal government saying, ‘We need to tighten the reins on this drug,’ ” said Scott R. Drab, associate professor of pharmacy and therapeutics at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Pharmacy. “Pulling in the rope is a way to rein in abuse, and, consequently, addiction.”

But at the panel’s two-day hearing at F.D.A. headquarters in Silver Spring, Md., many spoke against the change, including advocates for nursing home patients, who said frail residents with chronic pain would have to make the trip to a doctor’s office. The change would also ban nurse practitioners and physician assistants from prescribing the drugs, making it harder for people in underserved rural areas.

Panelists also cautioned that the change would produce a whack-a-mole effect, pushing up abuse of other drugs, like heroin, which has declined in recent years.

“Many of us are concerned that the more stringent controls will eventually lead to different problems, which may be worse,” said Dr. John Mendelson, a senior scientist at the Addiction and Pharmacology Research Laboratory at the California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute in San Francisco.

The F.D.A. convened the panel, made up of scientists, pain doctors and other experts, after a request by the Drug Enforcement Administration, which contends that the drugs are among the most frequently abused painkillers and should be more tightly controlled.

If the F.D.A. accepts the panel’s recommendation, it will be sent to officials at the Department of Health and Human Services, who will make the final determination. The F.D.A. denied a similar request by the D.E.A. in 2008, but the law enforcement agency requested that the F.D.A. reconsider its position in light of new research and data.

While hydrocodone products are the most widely prescribed painkillers, they make up a minority of deaths, because there is less medication in each tablet than some of the other more restricted drugs, like extended-release oxycodone products, said Dr. Nathaniel Katz, assistant professor of anesthesia at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston. Oxycodone and methadone products account for about two-thirds of drug overdose deaths, he said, despite accounting for only a fraction of hydrocodone prescriptions.

The importance of Friday’s vote was more symbolic, he said, a message to doctors that they will need to think twice before prescribing hydrocodone, and to patients that the days of “unbridled access” are coming to an end. The tide has been turning against easy opioid prescriptions, as the medical system and federal regulators slowly make adjustments to reduce the potential for abuse.

“It will help shape thinking,” said Dr. Katz, whose clinical research company, Analgesic Solutions, is trying to develop other treatments for pain. “It’s an important marker in the progressively more conservative swing of the pendulum in opioid prescribing.”

He cautioned that patients who need the medications for pain should not suffer inappropriate barriers to access because of the change, a concern that the dissenters shared.  Medical professionals battling the prescription drug abuse epidemic applauded the change.

“This may be the single most important intervention undertaken at the federal level to bring the epidemic under control,” said Dr. Andrew Kolodny, chairman of psychiatry at Maimonides Medical Center in New York and president of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing, a New York-based advocacy group. “This is about correcting a mistake made 40 years ago that’s had disastrous consequences.”

Testimony at the hearing included emotional appeals from parents who had lost their children to painkiller addiction. Senator Joe Manchin III, a Democrat from West Virginia, a state that has been hit hard by the prescription drug epidemic, pleaded for tougher restrictions.

“When I go back to West Virginia, I hear how easy it is for anybody to get their hands on hydrocodone drugs,” Mr. Manchin said. “For under-age children, these drugs are easier to get than beer or cigarettes.”

Monitoring patients pill-taking, a secret patent applied for, presumably for mentally-ill patients

"No, it don't sound very good to me."  It may prove to be necessary for some patients, to protect them, the care-givers, and the public.  But there are all sorts of questions about pills medical doctors prescribe, even to those with no mental-health problems.  Patients are listened to very much in regard to their experience of taking their presrcibed medications.  I've had pills prescribed that locked me into a near-paralysis that froze my muscles in my face, my mouth, my arms, my general body posture.  And they were accompanied by an antidote which did help relieve the results of the medications, some.  I've also known a mental-health patient who hated the effects on him of his medications, that he decided it was better to suffer his original discomfort than dutifully taking what the doctor had prescribed.  Either way he suffered.  Over the years, I've accumulated a number of these first-hand stories.  And, then, too there's the issue of sedating or tranquilizing a person (a young person, say) in order to zombie-ize him or her because the parents just wanted the youth out of the way, shut down, and the doctor went along with this plan of treatment.  Maybe the parents wanted to take a long trip, and needed to be certain their offspring (no longer a child) woud be sedate and tranquil at home.  No loud parties, no parties at all.  A pill can go a long way in making a parental trip easy.

This is the kind of problem regarding which I don't even want to have an opinion.  It's abstract, discussing it so in generalities.  But when you know a person, you may want to leave it to others to have the opinions and render the judgements and make the decisions about specific human individuals, yes, made in God's image but perhaps so messed up, even a professional may have to guess one's way toward a solution, a non-solution, a treatment.

-- Albert Gedriatis

ABC News  (Jan23,2k13)

Jan 21, 2013 9:30 am

Invention would track meds 

in mentally-ill patients, 

but is it ethical?

by Sydney Lupkin

Credit: Fotosearch/Getty Image

Imagine if doctors could add something to their mentally ill patients’ pills so that they could tell on their smartphones whether the patients were taking the pills as prescribed.

Inventor Don Spector has actually filed a patent that would do just that, and he did it after the Sandy Hook school shootings in Connecticut, which sparked a national debate about mental illness and privacy.

“This isn’t house arrest, but it is an invasion of privacy to some extent,”  Spector, Chairman of the Board of Trustees at New York College of Health Professions, said of his invention. “But on the other hand, these are really people who shouldn’t be released without medication.”

New York University bioethicist Arthur Caplan said many technologies monitor drugs, but they can only be used in specific settings. For instance, many companies require their employees to submit to urine drug tests as a condition of employment.

“Without a court order, it’s difficult to make anybody have to go along with drug testing unless it becomes a condition of employment,” Caplan said, calling it a potential civil liberties issue. “For a mentally ill person or someone on drugs for mental illness, monitoring them might be nice, but you probably are still going to need to get some kind of judgment or legal order before you can use the technology.”

He said it reminds him of forcing people found guilty of sex crimes to undergo chemical castration because of the consent issues involved.

Still, a mental health worker was stabbed to death in Oregon last May delivering medicine to a patient at home. Brent Redd, 30, whose mental illness was kept private because of patient confidentiality laws, stabbed 38-year-old Jennifer Warren with a kitchen knife after he lowered his doses of antipsychotic and antidepressant medications for an upcoming surgery. Five years earlier, Redd had been sentenced to 20 years in a psychiatric ward following the attempted murder of his mother, but was conditionally released into community care.

“Presumably, he had received treatment that made mental health professionals believe he was no longer at risk for violence,” said Dr. Ken Robbins, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison at the time. Robbins was not involved in Redd’s care.

Though monitoring of medications could have helped in a case like Redd’s, Caplan said there’s a slippery slope regarding which patients should be included in a monitoring program.  It could be limited to patients convicted of violent crimes, or patients who could become violent, or patients who could become disruptive — which could turn to violence — and so on and so forth.

“It gets into trouble very quickly that way in terms of wide use,” Caplan said.

Caplan added that even patients taking their medication can be provoked and act out violently, meaning the monitoring system wouldn’t guarantee safety. He also wondered whether the invasion of privacy would discourage patients from taking their medications, fueling the battle to convince people who are mentally ill to take their prescriptions.

Spector said a patient could carry the pill with the tracker on it in their pocket and trick the program, but he suggested  a way to deal with that. Somehow, the trackers could be designed to tell if the pill has dissolved in the bloodstream.

Since patent applications are sealed for 18 months after they’re filed, so that inventors can’t steal each other’s unpatented ideas, Spector said he couldn’t explain how the “markers” in the pills would work to transmit information about whether they’d been ingested.

“I will say this: It’s not very hard technology to do,” he said. “It’s a major difference in the way we monitor, but the technology is not going to be all that difficult to do.”

French contraceptive pill Mélanie and USA contraceptive YAZ are both manufactured by Bayer

French case of young woman who suffered stroke and coma apparently due to contraceptive Mélanie pill sold in France stirs comparisons.  In the USA, 13,500 women taking the YAZ pill have filed suits. The UN's autonomous agency, Business and Human Rights is circulating information about the case. The manufacturer in both countries is Bayer, and the French health watchdog agency, ANSM, is also in question for not stopping the drug.

— Albert Gedraitis

Radio France International Service english (Jan23,2k13) via Business & Human Rights (en français ici)

French woman sues Bayer 

over 3rd-generation contraceptive pill

Meliane pills

DR

By RFI

A French woman is suing pharmaceutical giant Bayer after suffering a stroke that she blames on a third-generation contraceptive pill. He lawyer says that a new case for involuntary homicide is in the works.

Marion Larat, 25, who has been classified as 25 per cent handicapped, has filed a case against Bayer and the French health watchdog, ANSM, after suffering a stroke and a coma in 2006. She has also suffered many after-effects, she says, including speech and memory problems.  Larat says she did not make the connection with the Méliane pill until 2010 when she changed gynaecologist.  “Nobody, but nobody, should take the third- or fourth-generation pill,” she told the AFP news agency.

At present between 1.5 million and two million women take the pills in France.

Although the ANSM has warned of possible dangers, Larat argues that it should have ordered the pill to be taken off the market.

Her lawyer, Jean-Christophe Coubris, said Friday that the parents of a young woman who was taking the pill and died from a blood clot on the lung may launch legal action against Bayer in the next few weeks.

Apart from expressing sympathy for the pain of the plaintiff, the company has refused to comment.

About 13,500 suits have been filed in the US by women who have taken Bayer’s YAZ pill.

TAGS: CONTRACEPTION - FRANCE - HEALTH - LAW - MEDICINE - UNITED STATES

Genetics has taken a big step in trying to understand what turns genes on or off

More break-thru science in medicine.  I really like Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.  I've been aware of some of their work over the years, and have been impressed.  Now this development that seems to be to be truly path-breaking!

-- Albert Gedraits


New York Times (Jan23,2k12)

Study finds how genes that 

cause illness work

By GINA KOLATA

Published: January 20, 2013

It has been one of the toughest problems in genetics. How do investigators figure out not just what genes are involved in causing a disease, but what turns those genes on or off? What makes one person with the genes get the disease and another not?

Drew Angerer/The New York Times

Dr. Andrew Feinberg

Now, in a pathbreaking paper, researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden report a way to evaluate one gene-regulation system: chemical tags that tell genes to be active or not. Their test case was of patients with rheumatoid arthritis, a crippling autoimmune disease that affects 1.5 million Americans.

It was an investigation of epigenetics, a popular area of molecular biology that looks for modifications of genes that can help determine disease risk.

“This is one of the first studies that looks for an epigenetic disease association in a really rigorous fashion,” said Dr. Bradley Bernstein of Harvard, who was not associated with the study.

Kun Zhang of the University of California, San Diego, made a similar observation.

“I am quite impressed with their level of rigor and sophistication,” he said. In previous genomic studies, researchers with papers in leading journals “have made major claims, but after a few months or a year they were retracted,” he said. Those investigators, Dr. Zhang added, “did not treat their data very carefully.”

In the new study, researchers compared 354 newly diagnosed rheumatoid arthritis patients and 337 healthy people who served as controls. The goal was to review both groups’ white blood cells, examining their DNA for chemical tags — methyl groups — that could attach themselves to genes and turn them on or off.

It was much more complicated than just studying genes themselves. Researchers know a gene will remain stable, but the chemical tags that turn the genes on and off are not so reliable. Their presence can be affected by the environment or medications or even the activity of other, distant genes. They can be a consequence of a disease or set off a disease.

“That’s the problem,” Dr. Bernstein said, “the arrow of time problem.” What is cause and what is effect?

It is known that genes are not the entire story in rheumatoid arthritis and other common diseases, said Dr. Timothy Spector, a professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London, who was not associated with the study. For example, though identical twins have identical DNA, they do not always get the same diseases. With rheumatoid arthritis, he added, if one twin gets the disease, there is only a 12 percent chance that the other will, too.

In their paper, published Sunday in Nature Biotechnology, the researchers reported measurement techniques that enabled them to sort things out. They found hundreds of chemical tags but only four that seemed truly related to the disease. Those four were in a cluster of genes that controls the immune response and that was known to affect the risk of rheumatoid arthritis, said Dr. Andrew Feinberg of Johns Hopkins, a lead author of the study. In particular, the tags were in a gene called C6orf10 whose function is unknown.

The chemical tags may help determine if a person with a gene that increases risk of developing a disease actually gets the disease. There were people in the control group who had gene variations associated with arthritis risk, but they did not have those four chemical tags and did not have the disease.

The work, Dr. Feinberg emphasized, does not contradict genetic studies pointing to disease susceptibility.

“Instead, it complements them,” he said. “It is another arrow in the quiver.”

Christian medical renewal in Mozambique, Uganda, Nigeria, Tanzania, Nepal, India, British Columbia Canda — all need our re-commitment to medicine as part of God's renewal of the world in Jesus Christ

This article below, largely the text of Nema Aluku (of World Renew) with orientation by Wendy Hammond of The Network (Christian Reformed Church in North America) is very welcome news to Christian Medical Observations & Ruminations.  There's poweful reformational vision here, and the CRCNA is supporting it.  I woud like to add to the roster two medical agencies found in the course of initiating this blog:  the Christian Medical College in Vellore, India (with what denominational affiliations, if any, I don't know) and the remote Christian hospitals in British Columbia, Canada, that serve areas where Native Peoples receive quality medicine in Christ's spirit (affiliated with the United Church of Canada).  This blog also supports the unique program at Duke University, North Carolina, where Christian medical-ethics specialist Dr Alan Verhey has joined a very serious academic program that fuses training at Duke Divinity School and Duke's School of Medicine.  In my imagination, hopes, and prayers all the agencies mentioned are part of the forward movement in Christ in medicine around the world in remote places, close to the ground, and in more central locations where there are some great hospitals even in urban areas.

— Albert Gedraitis


Christian Reformed Network (Jan22,2k13)
Embrace life:  
The value, relevancy, and need 
for Christian health care worldwide

by Wendy Hammond

January 22, 2013, 9:48 am

When I was in Nigeria recently with World Missions on an evaluation trip, over and over again the Nigerian churches told us about how effective the missionary hospitals were in the early years. In today's economic climate it's not feasible for denominations to set up state of the art hospitals, but when I came across a recent newsletter from Nema Aluku, the Health and HIV Program Manager for World Renew,  I was inspired to share what we are doing.

"As we drove down a lakeshore road en route to Lichinga, Mozambique, to meet with World Renew partner staff and interact with people on the frontline in health and HIV care in remote Cobue, I found myself drifting way back in time, reflecting on my life as a young girl in rural Malawi. I have specific memories of all the mission centers I lived in with my parents and siblings. A sense of peace swept over me, “peace which passes all understanding.” (Philippians 4:7) 

I reminisced about innocence: on the fragile and unpolluted minds of the children and folk in Malindi and the area around Lake Malawi. I marveled at the blue water, ecosystem, and hilly landscape as we drove into the highlands and dropped to low attitudes within minutes. The beautiful setting left me wondering, as I daydreamed, whether I had lived in this region in my childhood. I didn’t recall that particular view of Lake Malawi or those particular meandering roads leading up to isolated villages where homes dotted the sides of the main tarmac road. Suddenly, memories from my past engulfed my mind. The sight of a man riding a motorcycle brings a smile to my face as I recall riding a motorbike with my father. I remembered the excitement of hanging on tightly to his jacket, his reassuring voice keeping me at ease as we zoomed around the village. That was me! I recalled my childhood as I saw a group of little girls playing in the red soil, jumping up and down, singing without a care! That was me! Hah! How time flies! 

A chill came over me as I recalled some challenging times we endured when I was a child living along the lake shore. The days when my mother rushed me to the health center so that I could be treated for malaria. Worse still, the long nights she spent praying as I struggled with hallucinations caused by a high fever from cerebral malaria. Yet, here I was, reliving my childhood bittersweet memories. What would have happened if the mission hospitals were not there? What if the missionary nurse or doctor was not there? Medicine? Lab kits? Neo-natal care? Community clinics? What if the nursing schools were not opened and manned by caring Christians? What if? We all valued the services and care that we received at these facilities: the lessons that mothers received from nurses and midwives; the counseling from the chaplain and the visitation from the mothers union. For some, the health center was a meeting place to encounter Christianity or learn more about faith in God. The health center, as I recall, was a melting pot for the cross and the crescent! 

As we drove through this remote part of Mozambique, I could not help but wonder at how diverse and unique Africa is. From the historical and religious backgrounds to the political and socioeconomic context all brought together like a puzzle. Yet here we are, fifty or so years after independent Africa, and the signs of poverty, desperation, and political turmoil are ever so near. Yet, from this quagmire of struggle, there are glimpses of hope and diversity. There is renewed energy for mobilizing Christian health care services in remote, hard to reach are as of our region. Yes! Seeing it first hand is uplifting and mind boggling: questions about how historical Christian health care efforts have slowly fallen through the cracks swamp my mind. Many of the mission health centers that were once deeply cherished by communities and are still needed by them now stand in ruins or are barely functioning. Yet, in this seemingly desperate environment, women from faraway lands— England and USA—are working collaboratively with local community members to restore Christian health care in remote areas. What seems impossible to humans is made possible through Christ. The zealousness with which World Renew’s community health teams are being brought under the umbrella of “mission” leaves many speechless. Our volunteer health care providers sometimes walk over 200kms through rough terrain, rain or shine, to reach out to all regardless of tribe, religion, age, or health. World Renew’s Life Teams reach out with love and compassion to all who are living with economic and environmental challenges. 

Christian health care is still relevant in Africa as an integral part of community transformation. Through the establishment, refurbishment, and twinning of hospitals and churches to community partnerships, communities are empowered and transformed to take charge of their health while churches are ministering to unchurched individuals. Looking back at my childhood, I cannot ask for anything more than good health. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me!” (Philippian 4:13)

What can you do? 

As I reflected on my journey to good health on the drive to Lichinga, I realized that often missionary health facilities are the center of community life. Even today, they draw hundreds of patients because of their compassionate care for those who are ill. Yet, the facilities are run down and poorly managed. They lack supervision, have high staff workloads, and are short on supplies and equipment. World Renew is working through our existing partnerships in communities to bring about health reforms through Christian health facilities. We need to carry out research and document health trends to build partner and church capacity to effectively manage and run health facilities that are sustainable through community and church structures. Research should inform the direction of health reforms, especially where Christian mission health care is concerned.

What is the future of Christian health care in this region? World Renew partners like PAG Kabale in Uganda are eager to begin community health center programs in their area. Based on what we have learned in Mozambique, empowered community members can do wonders. They can, with technical support and encouragement, run and manage medical equipment that measures blood count levels for people living with HIV and AIDS. So, through research, exchange learning, twinning of health facilities in and outside the region, and church to community partnerships, Christian health centers can be revived. All it takes is commitment, enthusiasm, and patience."

Does your church support any medical missions/healthcare initiatives?

Nema Aluku is the Health and HIV Program Manager for World Renew. Want to learn more about what CRC agencies are doing in the area of health care? Here is just a sampling:

Christian Reformed World Missions

• Mizoram Nurses in Nepal
• See also the Project Giving Guide

World Renew

• AIDS
• Child & Maternal Health
• Currently seeking Medical Volunteers for Tanzania

Also, while not a CRC agency, many churches support the Luke Society.Christian Reformed Network