HCJB to Expand Healthcare Works Worldwide
HCJB World Radio announced its intention to begin expanding its medical ministries beyond Ecuador to other countries in Latin America and around the world.
HCJB World Radio announced its intention to begin expanding its medical ministries beyond Ecuador to other countries in Latin America and around the world.
The world’s first missionary broadcast organization released news Tuesday that it wants to put “hands and feet” to its broadcasting outreach and start becoming more medically active in Latin America and Africa, in particular.
“We’ve learned some lessons, and now it’s time to look outside of Ecuador and into the rest of Latin America and the world,” said International Healthcare Coordinator Sheila Leech in a news release. “We’ve already been involved to a limited extent with projects outside of Ecuador for years. The program to eliminate river blindness, for example, has been used as a model in Colombia and Venezuela.
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“In the last couple of years we’ve partnered with a group in Bolivia, helping them start a mobile medical clinic ministry by donating our older, renovated truck for their use. Staff members now speak at conferences outside of Ecuador and have been sent to Africa to explore potential partnerships,” Leech added.
The radio’s Vozandes Hospital in Quito, Ecuador, celebrated its 50th anniversary last October, maintaining its status as the only Christian hospital in the country. The organization’s health care system in Ecuador includes two hospitals, nine medical clinics and a community development outreach.
Ecuadorian medical professionals felt a strong need to expand the healthcare ministry last year after the multiple international disasters. Teams from Quito were sent abroad to Indonesia and Pakistan last year to help respond to the medical and spiritual needs of the victims.
In March, a team went to Indonesia’s Nias Island to help survivors of the Dec. 26, 2004 tsunami. But while they were there an earthquake struck and the medical team was the first onsite relief in Nias Island after the disaster, providing emergency medical care.
Later in the fall when a massive quake hit South Asia, two Quito teams partnered with SIM (Serving In Mission) International to help quake victims in Pakistan. Four members of the teams in Pakistan were Ecuadorians who worked at Hospital Vozandes-Quito.
The medical ministry hopes in the near future to expand water and sanitation projects in Bolivia and partner with other organizations in Colombia and Honduras to help setup and run community clinics through local churches.
In addition, HCJB is looking for staff to serve in their Sub-Saharan Africa medical programs in the Republic of Congo, South Africa, and Malawi.
Ultimately, the goal is for local partners to lead the ministries while HCJB World Radio’s role is supportive.
“I’d like to see short-term teams traveling to Africa for construction projects and having HCJB World Radio missionaries on loan to our partner ministries for defined periods of time in order to work alongside partners and train them,” said Leech. “We could also help partners find donated equipment and supplies.”
In Ecuador, many of the key leadership roles at Hospital Vozandes-Quito are held by Ecuadorians. Moreover, the satellite clinics are staffed and managed nearly exclusively by Ecuadorian healthcare professionals with minimal input from missionaries, HCJB’s Leech informed. Similarly, the HCJB research lab is staffed entirely by Ecuadorians.
“There’s a richness in sharing ministry among missionaries and national staff,” Leech said. “As more well-prepared nationals emerge, we’ll ensure that the best people are placed in key positions, whether missionaries or nationals.”
HCJB World Radio began in 1931 as a missionary broadcasting organization that aired the Gospel around the world. Now, it has expanded to more than 200 cities in more than 100 countries, working together with local communities. HCJB and its local partners together broadcast the gospel in more than 120 languages and dialects.
“God has provided us with top-class facilities, and our family medicine residency is known for excellence,” stated Leech. “We plan to start training medical missionaries to serve on foreign fields. We want to see our healthcare ministries extend beyond the borders of Ecuador, Latin America and into the uttermost parts of the earth.
“God has allowed us 50 years to work and learn in Ecuador. Now it’s time to move out and provide integral care and healing to the nations,” he concluded.
