wfn.org | FEATURE: Nicaragua -- "Everything must be based on faith"

[FRANK_IMHOFF.parti@ecunet.org (FRANK IMHOFF)]

Nicaraguan Lutheran church runs medical services in Managua

MANAGUA, Nicaragua/GENEVA, 14 May 1998 (lwi) - When doctors in the public
health service go on strike in countries like Nicaragua, the impoverished
majority of the population has to bear the burden.

This majority is comprised of the campesinos without a coin in their
pockets, and the innumerable dwellers in cardboard, plastic and corrugated
tin huts in the urban barrios, who barely manage to survive from day to
day. Where should they go for medical treatment? A single visit to a
private doctor or hospital is beyond their means, not to mention the cost
of prescription drugs. At least they can find help at the walk-in clinic
which The Nicaraguan Lutheran Church of Faith and Hope has maintained for
eight years in the capital city, Managua. In the modest but sensibly
equipped rooms of a one-story building, an internist and a dentist
supported by one laboratory technician, see about 500 patients a month.

Anyone who has a steady income pays about four to six US dollars per
treatment. Church members, most of whom belong to the poorest classes, pay
half a US dollar, including prescribed drugs. This presupposes, of course,
that the clinic has the prescribed medicine in stock, thanks to
international donations or its own purchases.

Since the doctors have been on strike, paralysing the public health service
for weeks on end, the church's board has even temporarily lowered the
general fee to one US dollar, and of course word has quickly spread. The
most needy are cared for free of charge, whatever the case.

This initiative is an extremely heavy burden on the church budget. Receipts
cover only a third of the costs. "We work half-days and would like to stay
open longer, but we have no prospect of finding the necessary funds,"
director of the clinic and the dentist, Helder Torrez, explains.

The future is also uncertain for a preventive and educational health
project which a midwife from the United States of America has been running
with the support of her home church, so far with considerable success. She
even has been able to carry out cancer detection tests on women in very
remote villages and to train several such women as health counsellors.
Three German Lutheran congregations have offered to be partners in
continuing support for this training. But scarcely any suitable applicants
for the expensive training program have been found so far, according to the
Nicaraguan church leaders and clinic director.

For Victoria Cortez, president of the Nicaraguan church, all these issues
also have to do with the continuing development of the faith community.
^From its beginnings, in gatherings of refugees from El Salvador, it has
grown into an independent church with about 25 congregations, some well
established, some just being formed. "We want preaching the Word and
practising it to be very closely connected. Everything must be based on
faith," she says in explaining her concept of a pastoral integral, a
holistic pastoral ministry. "After all, we don't want to become an NGO just
like any other."

This self-concept, of a church which feels that its immediate obligation is
the salvation of individual persons, does not exclude political
involvement, however. Last year members of farmers' cooperatives
demonstrated in protest against confiscation of their land, which was to be
returned to former owners allied with the Somoza family, the former
dictators. Cortez made a point of joining with the farmers in their
protest. To critics she made it clear that "all we are doing is fighting
for their lives".

(Editor's note: The author of this article, Wolfgang Heilig-Achneck, works
as an editor in Nuremberg, Germany. From 9 to 17 April he took part, along
with representatives of Nuremberg churches, in a visit to The Nicaraguan
Lutheran Church of Faith and Hope.)

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Lutheran World Information
Editorial Assistant: Janet Bond-Nash
E-mail: jbn@lutheranworld.org
http://www.lutheranworld.org/