Our vision for medical ministry, in contrast to war-time relief work, is to model community-sustainable healthcare with an autofinancing primary and ocular healthcare clinic. The Centre Medico-Chirurgical Lukumu L’Ololo (Evangelical Medical-Surgical Center), established in Lodja in May 1997 in the throes of the local unrest surrounding the Kabila revolution, is our primary means for doing this. This clinic opened its doors as a ambulatory primary-care health center with a missionary staff of one doctor (Timothy), and a national staff of two nurses, one nurse-pharmacist, one clerk and three general duty workers. In 1999, after our evacuation from Lodja at the outbreak of the civil war, Timothy trained in ocular surgery at the Vanga Evangelical Hospital under Dr. Patrice Mayala with the Christian Blind Mission. Upon our return to Lodja in 2002, the clinic inaugurated a medical and surgical eyecare service, providing all basic eyecare from consultations and glasses to cataract and glaucoma surgery. This service is the only one of its kind within 300 kilometers of our town of Lodja, and has the potential to become an eyecare training center for national doctors and nurses from throughout the Sankuru region. Housed right now in a rented building originally built as a single-family dwelling in the Belgian colonial era, the Centre Medico-Chirurgical Lukumu L’Ololo is awaiting its move into a building now under construction and much more appropriate to its needs. Established as a special developmental project under FODESA, with pastoral assistance from the Evangelical Church of the Congo, the Centre Medico-Chirurgical Lukumu L’Ololo provides quality medical care in a way that allows opportunity to approach illness holistically, addressing issues of the spirit, soul and body. Not only is every effort made to provide curative medical care appropriate to the primitive, tropical context, but an effort is made as well to share with those passing through the clinic the good news of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection, the forgiveness of sin, and the hope of eternal life through faith in Him. All patients are offered prayer, and on-going counseling is available to them through the local churches. Body, spirit, soul, mind – healing through and through. The Centre Medico-Chirurgical Lukumu L’Ololo is an auto-financed ministry, receiving neither government aid nor grant monies. It’s nominal patient consultation and surgical fees cover all clinic operational expenses including national staff salaries, building rent, taxes, tithe, special benevolence programs for widows and orphans, and other daily costs. Medicines and supplies are sold at a price that allows for replenishment of stock, which generally is purchased in bulk from suppliers specializing in distributions of medicines to developing countries. Timothy receives no salary from the clinic. Your contributions make it possible for him to work voluntarily, as well as provide non-consumable capital investment materials for the clinic such as lab equipment, office furniture and operating instruments. The construction of a new clinic/eye hospital building will be entirely donor-supported as well. If you would like to have a part in the ministry of Centre Medico-Chirurgical Lukumu L’Ololo, see the page How To Participate for more information. |
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