CV NEWS FEED // Twelve years before the founding of Doctors Without Borders, and two years before the Peace Corps, a Catholic organisation called Mission Doctors Association (MDA) began pioneering efforts to provide professional aid to under-served communities around the world.
“Our mission is twofold,” MDA Program Director Amie Garcia told CatholicVote in an exclusive interview at the National Eucharistic Congress: “It’s not only to provide life saving care to the patients who need it, but it’s also to train local professionals.”
“We like to say that one day, we hope to work ourselves out of a job,” she said.
Program
MDA sends medical professionals of all kinds, from dentists, to ophthalmologists, to PAs according to Garcia.
The organisation has both long and short-term programs available. The long-term program is three years and fully-funded, while the short term program is one to three months and at the participant’s expense.
MDA currently serves communities in Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania, Honduras, and Peru. Garcia also revealed that the organisation is currently exploring a new partnership with a site in Sierra Leone.
According to Garcia, MDA vets its potential partners extensively before sending medical staff to a new site. The process involves a long questionnaire about the hospital’s resources and needs.
MDA also only begins the process of exploring a partnership at the invitation of the local bishop.
Family-Friendly
MDA accepts couples and families, as well as individuals of any age to its program, as long as they have completed a residency, Garcia stated, noting that there are always opportunities for any non-medical spouses and adult children to work and serve in the community.
“There’s multiple projects going on wherever we are—we’ve sent people where the doctor is incredibly useful,” she continued, adding with a laugh: “but maybe her husband is an IT person and he is potentially a little more useful.”
“Anywhere we go, there’s always something to be done, and we make sure that we find a site that fits the family’s needs, the couple’s needs, and the individual’s needs, whatever they may be,” said Garcia.
An Experience of Spiritual Growth
MDA exclusively sends its doctors and medical professionals to Catholic facilities, where there is opportunity to become integrated in the faith community, which Garcia says is “the biggest thing.”
“One of our dentists said it best,” Garcia recalled, ‘You know, they used to say that Africa was the future of the Church,’ [but] came back and said, ‘no that is not true, Africa is the present.’”
“It’s just beautiful,” she continued: “You see women who walk multiple miles every single day, you know, just to go and be with the Eucharist. And I think that’s what’s astounding.”
Garcia shared that many doctors often take their children with them while they are on rounds.
“We had one doctor go short term, and honestly, the way he spoke about bringing his family along with them just gave me chills,” she said. “His kids were able to kind of see his rounds that he was doing in the hospital, which again, probably wouldn’t really happen here.”
While the doctor was on round with his children, a patient who was “very very sick” asked if they could pray with him. “And so they all prayed with him,” Garcia said, “and the man was overjoyed.”
“My kids would never [otherwise] be able to see how I serve and respond to my faith,” the doctor told Garcia.
History
MDA was founded in 1959 by Monsignor Anthony Brouwers, who was the director of the propagation of faith in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles at the time. Msgr Brouwers was inspired to found the organisation after a trip to Lagos, Nigeria.
In his meetings with local bishops, priests, and nuns during his trip, the most frequent request they made was for professional medical aid.
“He assumed that they would ask him to go home and raise money,” said Garcia, explaining that in the communities Msgr Bouwers visited, he met sisters who were pulling teeth, priests who were overseeing construction sites, and even a bishop who delivered mail in his spare time.
“Really, what he thought he heard over and over again, was that they needed help,” she concluded, “And so he came back to the United States in 1955, with an idea that the lay people, like Catholics could help and serve in response to their faith.”
