The General Board of Global Ministries, through its Health and Welfare Ministries, continues to carry on work that has been important to Methodists since Methodism was founded by John Wesley. The March-April issue of New World Outlook focuses on a number of the GBGM's current health initiatives and programs, including Comprehensive Community-based Primary Health Care, the Medicine Box program, disability initiatives, AIDS ministry, and the health challenges faced by the poor in the aftermath of natural disasters.
"Today it is my joy to be among colleagues who help organize United Methodist involvement in God's mission through ministries of health, healing, medicine, self-care, community-based health care, and advocacy for healthy living," writes Deputy General Secretary Paul Dirdak in his introduction to our March-April issue. Dirdak presents an overview of the new work that the Health and Welfare area of Health and Relief is undertaking and reminds readers of the traditional kinds of work the unit has supported through many years of service.
The Health Challenges of Hurricane Mitch
Now that the storm winds have died down and the flooding caused by Hurricane Mitch has subsided, Central Americans are faced with the task of rebuilding their communities and lives. Paul Jeffrey, a United Methodist missionary in Honduras, looks at the health toll levied by the hurricane. Jeffrey shows how the global economy, corrupt politicians, and the simple fact of poverty make recovery efforts in Central America much more difficult. Even without the hurricane, health risks in poverty-stricken rural areas were great. Now, with crops destroyed and infrastructure washed away, the need to address the reasons for such a poor quality of life become imperative.
Wendy Whiteside helps congregations understand the importance of a Medicine Box to communities in countries around the world, from Argentina to Bosnia to Zaire. She spotlights a church in Hatboro, Pennsylvania, that gathered enough specified supplies and monetary offerings to send off six Medicine Boxes in 1998. "The medicine box will serve many people who will not be able to get medicine otherwise. The antibiotic and parasitic medication will be of great use," notes Rosetta Booker Brown, United Methodist missionary in Angola.
AIDS Ministry for a New Millennium
Although the number of new AIDS cases and deaths from AIDS has been dropping in the United States since 1996, Nancy Carter reminds readers that the global pandemic of AIDS continues to intensify. The so-called AIDS "drug cocktails" have helped a small percentage of people, but eventually, since the HIV virus has proven its efficiency at adapting to new treatments, the drugs will become ineffective. Carter explains why people of faith must continue their ministries with people who have AIDS and must start new ones. "Prevention education is extremely important," she writes. "Even today, many people do not know how AIDS is transmitted and the ways in which it can be prevented."
Hope and Healing Through Comprehensive Community-based Primary Health Care
Sarla Lall, the GBGM's executive secretary of Congregational Health Ministries, updates readers about the progress of Comprehensive Community-based Primary Health Care. This health-care program is a "South-to-South" model of cooperation, in which practitioners in India share their training and information with communities in Africa and Latin America. Quotes from practitioners in Brazil, Bolivia, and Mozambique provide a testament to the success the program has had in poor communities around the world.
Healing the Trauma of War at UMCOR's Youth House in Georgia
The Republic of Georgia, which gained independence when the former Soviet Union broke up in 1991, has been the scene of bloody battles for Abkhazian independence. Abkhazia had been an autonomous Soviet republic within Georgia. In 1992, the Abkhaz parliament declared Abkhazia a sovereign state and, with Russian support, defeated the Georgian military in 1993. Since then, hundreds of thousands of ethnic Georgians have been expelled from Abkhazia and have fled to Georgia's capital, Tbilisi. Jane Schreibman takes her camera into an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) center in Tbilisi and also into the Youth House run by the United Methodist Committee on Relief. There, UMCOR struggles to improve the lives of uprooted children traumatized by war.
Disability Initiatives: Including Everyone in the Community of Faith
Charlotte Hawkins Shepard, a health consultant with the General Board of Global Ministries' Health and Welfare Ministries, writes about the progress of The United Methodist Church in its attempts to fully include people with disabilities in the community of faith. Shepard introduces readers to the Disability Concerns Electronic Bulletin Board (DISC), which provides a common meeting place for people living with sensory, physical, emotional, neurological, or learning disabilities. Using this bulletin board, people with disabilities and their advocates can communicate with one another and share information and support.
Prosthetic Relief for Angolan People
Sarla Lall writes about the Jaipur Foot Technology program in which the people of India are enabled through UMCOR to share a much-needed technology with the people of Angola. Landmines, planted under the soil during the civil war in Angola, explode whenever someone happens to step on them, and they have left many Angolan civilians as well as soldiers without limbs. Prosthesis-making technology developed by Dr. P. K. Sethi in India costs about $110 per artificial limb, as compared with European technology that costs $1000-$1500 per prosthesis. Lall describes the experience of the first Indian team that went to Angola, traveling to Quessua Mission Center in Melange to bring prosthetic relief to Angola's amputees.
Adventures of a Deaf and Hearing Mission Team in Kenya
Is American sign language the same as Kenyan sign language? No, it's not, a team of mission volunteers discovers. And while English (with Swahili) is one of Kenya's two official languages, members of the volunteer team from the United States learned a new sign language in order to communicate with deaf children in one of the schools they went to visit. Kirk VanGilder, a deaf pastor in the Baltimore-Washington Conference, describes a mission volunteer trip in which teams from two United Methodist churches in Maryland--one of them Christ Church of the Deaf-- traveled to Kenya for two weeks. Some volunteers taught Bible School and did renovation work at the Kaaga School for the Deaf in Meru and the Njia Special School in Maua, while others went to various hospitals and hospice homes where people with HIV/AIDS were living to assess how the Baltimore-Washingotn Conference could best assist them. The Maryland team also shared ideas with the newly formed Deaf Unit (congregation) at the Kaaga Methodist Church.
"Mission in the Twenty-First Century," with historical and forward-looking articles on Methodism in mission; United Methodist mission initiatives in Russia, Kazakhstan, Cuba, Cambodia, and Senegal; and an ecumenical consultation bringing Methodist and Orthodox Christians together. Also, "Humanity Comes of Age," with practical ideas for ministry with older adults.
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