Health for All: The Vanga Story

Product Description When Dan Fountain and his wife arrived in the Congo in 1961, the challenges to effective medical missions seemed overwhelming. As the only doctor for a quarter of a million residents of the Vanga Health Zone, and with nothing but a dilapidated mission hospital and an undertrained staff to run it, Dr. Fountain turned to prayer, innovation, and local partnerships to meet the vast needs of his area. Health for All tells the story of an ever-increasing vision?from curative care to community health, from a barely functioning hospital to a network of successful health services, from a lack of qualified workers to a local residency training program, from biomedical reductionism to whole person care, from cultural stalemate to worldview transformation. Dr. Fountain?s insights into health and wholeness have changed countless lives and communities. Part memoir, part history, part textbook, Health for All is the legacy of a man who patterned his life and labor after that of the Great Physician. Review Health for All, Dr. Fountain's magnum opus distilled from thirty-five years' experience as a physician in the Congo, provides some of the most important insights into missions available anywhere today. A master of cross-cultural communication second to none, Dr. Fountain has unique insights into the problems in medical missions today, the problems we have when healthcare is reduced to physical care, a biblical approach to healthcare, how to make healthcare financially sustainable, and other issues at the core of development. His discussion of animism alone is worth the price of the book-and not just for those who practice in "developing countries." In a day in which thousands of would-be world changers are crying for role models, Dr. Fountain's amazing personal story inspires and informs. This ought to be a required textbook for anyone even considering doing cross-cultural healthcare. Carolyn Klaus, MD