An excerpt from...
The Outreaches of Tenwek Hospital
By Mike Chupp, Kenya
July-September 2014
World Gospel Mission’s approach to evangelism and discipleship is through wholistic community transformational ministries. This recognizes that the gospel shapes not only what we believe, but also how we live. Just as Jesus ministered through preaching, teaching, and healing, WGM ministers through evangelism, education, and medical ministries. This has been our approach ever since the first missionaries were sent.
WGM currently has medical ministries in Africa, North America, and Latin America. One medical ministry that has grown from a small, single-nurse dispensary in 1937 to a large teaching hospital complex today is Tenwek Hospital in Kenya, East Africa.
In addition to the main 300-bed referral and training medical center located near the town of Bomet, three satellite clinics operate at Kaboson, Naikarra, and Ngito. Tenwek also ministers in the area of preventative medicine through Tenwek Community Health and Development. Since the start of TCHD, cases of malaria at the hospital have declined by 42 percent, cases of diarrheal diseases by 86 percent, and cases of measles by 99.6 percent. Moreover, TCHD’s mobile maternal and child health clinics have improved the health of pregnant women, reducing maternal morbidity and mortality.
Training national staff has been a focus at Tenwek since its inception. The first Kenyan administrator was appointed in 1972. In 1984, Tenwek Hospital employed 146 national staff members. Three years later, Tenwek School of Nursing opened, training Kenyan nurses for service at Tenwek Hospital and throughout Kenya. Tenwek now employs over 700 national staff, and nearly all of the top administrative posts are filled by Kenyans. Since the early 1990s, Tenwek Hospital has expanded its education efforts to include an internship program, a family medicine residency program, a surgical residency program, and an orthopedic surgery residency program. An eye clinic performs over 2,000 surgeries a year. Open heart surgery and joint replacement surgery are now done regularly at Tenwek Hospital. A CT scanner was dedicated for use and operational in September 2011.
Other Tenwek outreaches include immunization distribution, a hospice ministry, and chaplaincy training.
GIVE: You can partner financially with the outreach projects of Tenwek Hospital to ensure that more medical needs are met in rural Kenya. The ministries featured in this article are online at www.wgm.org/tenwek, www.wgm.org/tenwekschoolof
nursing, and www.wgm.org/agc-correctional.
And excerpt from...
Tenwek Hospice
Expressing love and compassion to those in need
By Stephen Manchester, Kenya
July-September 2014
As Samwel entered the patient room in a Nairobi hospital, the oncologist greeted him in the usual courteous way he had come to expect from the past several months of chemotherapy. However, the doctor’s manner became abruptly serious as he explained to Samwel, “It is now very clear that your cancer has spread to your lungs. We have no further treatment plan for you.” Those words crushed Samwel as a wave of panic and despair came over him. He felt no encouragement when the doctor said he was referring him to a hospice program. Samwel had never heard the word hospice before. He couldn’t believe his oncologist was giving up on him! “Can you send me to another specialist? Is there another medicine that I can take?” When a shaking head was his only answer, Samwel was overwhelmed with despair.
In 2002, Tenwek Hospice was started because the doctors at Tenwek Hospital sensed the hopelessness that patients like Samwel were feeling. Tenwek administration appointed Ruth Tomasawa as their first hospice nurse. With a second nurse, a chaplain, and a driver for their small vehicle, she established a program like few others in Africa. Tenwek Hospice is a rural, home-based program where the staff goes to the patients, wherever they are. These visits often involve walking long distances and getting lost, stuck in the mud, or caught in the rain. There are no charges for services since patients rarely value the program before they begin to experience the love and compassion that is expressed through Tenwek Hospice.
Over the months that our hospice team has visited Samwel, he has come to know hope once again. He no longer worries that he has been abandoned by medical personnel or by God. The nurses who come to his home to care for Samwel and his family in his final days are the hands and heart of God to him and have shown him the hope of eternity. He recently shared his testimony in our local church and now is a frequent speaker in the area, telling how he found hope where others would expect despair.
The goal of palliative care (or hospice care) is not to put days into the life, but to put life into the days remaining. Samwel will admit that he doesn’t know what the future holds, but he is living an abundant life despite his diagnosis.
For 12 years, Tenwek Hospice has shown Jesus’ love and compassion at a time in people’s lives when it is most needed. Patients don’t have to hear that there is nothing more that can be done for them. Nothing could be further from the truth!
GIVE: You can express love and compassion to patients like Samwel in hospice care through prayer as well as a financial gift. Help offset the expenses of Tenwek’s hospice ministries at www.wgm.org/hospice-care-tenwek.
