Health Clinics & Training
Health care in an urban poor setting is a great challenge. How can one show compassionate care without running out of resources? While many health care services in the Philippines are quite modern and well-advanced, the Filipino urban poor continue to suffer needlessly from very preventable and curable diseases. Diets among the very poor frequently consist of little more than rice and soy sauce, leading to undernourishment and malnourishment. Crowded dwellings lacking proper ventilation, sanitation, and clean water are dangerous breeding grounds illness. Among the urban poor, tuberculosis rates can alarmingly soar to up to 50 percent of the population. Per capita health expenditure is a mere $174 yearly, compared to $5,711 spent on Americans. The Philippines also has the highest birth rate in Asia, with the possibility of the population doubling within the next three decades!1 The lack of resources to care for this rising population poses major challenges to the health system. Unable to afford the costs of regular medical checkups, most urban poor will wait to seek medical assistance until their situation is already too serious.
The greater challenge, however, is how one can give compassionate care through which people find the Lord. The answer lies in making the health ministry part of the movement. When the church grows and multiplies, then effective health care must grow and multiply with it. We must teach and train local people how to care for the sick and show them that there is a God who cares even when we seem to run out of possibilities. The problems of the poor will not be solved with good health for today—although that is important—but with a strong faith in The Lord that can look beyond the present hardships.
Last Updated on Sunday, 17 January 2010 17:05
