AHP Course in Zambia March 15-29, 2011

WWU Church Trains and Equips Adventist Health Promoters in Zambia

“It was a dark and stormy night,” African dark, tropical stormy and we were loaded to the roof line with 23 souls and enough supplies to sustain us and 40 more.

For perhaps the 20th time in our lives Deanne and I were driving the dirt 120 km track from Chipata, Zambia to the South Luangwa valley, site of Africa’s last unspoiled game reserve, and home to 70,000 underserved African’s who live next to the game park. Every time before we’d come to see elephant, lion, hippo, and carmine bee-eaters. During the 13 years we lived and worked in Africa this was our favorite retreat out of the 20th century back to much earlier times when animals coexisted with men. Now that men have automatic rifles and cell phones the balance between the two requires that human’s be banned and the animals be protected in a game reserve, so the villages were moved to the boundaries across the rainy season swollen South Luangwa, and the animals roam more of less protected in the 9,000 sq km they have as their own. Sort of like Creation Day 6 before the two in God’s image came from the red earth.

Except that for a long time nature has shown the intrinsic conflict between the Intelligent Designer and the Intelligent Destroyer. The poor little lamb has been slain from the foundation of the earth, by aspects of lion-hood not intended by the Creator. Both Christ and Satan have been likened to the lion, because in the complex weave of nature the knowledge of good continues to be bound to the knowledge of evil. Earth has shown for a very long time the conflict between the laws of Love and the laws of Self-exaltation. Christ taught that Satan has been a murderer from “the Beginning.” So nature in Zambia can teach both bravery and courage and redness of tooth and claw. The believer sees both and chooses the way of life resulting from obedience to Love.

Tourists and visitors can fly to the Mfuwe airport, be picked by in a Land-Rover, driven on an isolated 30 km stretch of pavement in an otherwise unpaved district, to a comfortable game lodge. They bypass most of the villages trying to earn a living on half the land they used to occupy, and restricted from the hunting that was integral to their sustenance. Adventism is a powerful force in Zambia today. There are hundreds of thousands of young SDAs all across this centrally located Southern-African nation. But even Adventism has perhaps bypassed those in the Eastern Province and especially those in the Mambwe district containing both the South Luangwa Game Park and the villages outside of the park.

There are four churches and some smaller companies in the valley. Three of the churches have buildings of some sort, one meets in a school classroom on the Sabbath.

40 of the lay members of these small churches had volunteered to spend 10 days in a full time course to train them as community health workers, with an Adventist advantage. We called them Adventist Health Promoters, and our two minibuses and pickup truck loaded with the people and supplies to make this happen slipped and slid and bounced down the rain slicked roads in the early morning hours of March 17.

Walla Walla University SDA church sponsored the team of students and adults, but it was Troy and Deanne’s fault. Pastor and educator Troy Fitzgerald and the Hoehn family have partnered on short term missions to Africa for about a decade. Last year was the time for this to happen, but personal issues and Haiti got in the way. So 2011 at school spring break was the time. As usual we met in Deanne’s kitchen where Troy dreams and Deanne makes it work. We are talking right brain, left brain here and Pastor Troy and Mrs. Hoehn work together well, with his inspiration and Deanne’s detailing.

Jack Hoehn however was dreaming this time too. He had 13 years of African mission hospital experience, a diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from the University of London and the Royal College of Surgeons to prove it. Each previous trip with medical and dental professionals was an exercise of clinics examining and treating the hundred of patients eager for Western Medicine. Hundreds of people were more or less treated and at least encouraged, and we had supplied months of medicines for local clinics we upgraded.

But short term clinics like short term relationships can be interesting but are not rewarding. And although leaving medicines for a Rural Health Center can be life saving for some, most of the time I left with a feeling of inadequacy. Several of the African health care workers we worked with had gone on to offer upgraded health services for years. In one case our two week mission led to a new Rural Health Center being constructed in an unserved area of Malawi. But most of the time our busy clinics were not enough, not nearly enough.

So the dream was to teach and train instead of treating. Teach others to treat, empower motivated Zambians with tools for health. This is indeed in the traditions of Adventism that our prophetess enunciated time and time again: every Adventist a home medical missionary to neighbors and friends. Ellen White often repeated this message--

“God’s people are to be genuine medical missionaries. They are to learn to minister to the needs of soul and body. They should know how to give the simple treatments that do so much to relieve pain and remove disease. They should be familiar with the principles of health reform, that they may show others how, by right habits of eating, drinking, and dressing, disease may be prevented and health regained.” Ellen G. White (RH May 5, 1904).

So we slipped and slid down dark wet African tracks en route to a newly built Mambwe Farmer Training Center, Providentially newly constructed for our dream (we were the first group to use it for a training program) where we would train 40 Adventist lay members as community health workers, using two textbooks, David Werner’s fantastic WHERE THERE IS NO DOCTOR and Ellen White’s most mature contribution to Adventism, THE MINISTRY OF HEALING.

The traditional and practical points of the Adventist Health Message mesh perfectly with the home and village health care principles taught to community health workers. Biblical health principles of Cleanliness, Hygiene, Sanitation, Plant Based Diet, Sexual Morality, and Rational Obedience to natural and moral law supplement the same scientific based observations.

We tackled the issue of women’s rights, and the kind of rulership the Bible is promoting for husbands. (Suggesting that a husband is to rule the wife according to Genesis 3, as the sun was to rule the day, and the moon the night in Genesis 1, in a supporting, empowering, observant, gentle manner. ) Frank open and then gender specific discussions of sexuality and practices were held, in a nation staggering under the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The recent scientific support of male circumcision of all infants and even adult males was introduced as a new topic for Adventist Health Promoters to adopt and promote for their communities at large.

The AHP kit was simple but potentially powerful:

• 1 x Where There is No Doctor


• 1 x Ministry of Healing, reference texts that stay long after our team returns home.


• 1 x simple headlamp with spare batteries


• 1 x Sawyer 0.2 water filtration system, capable of back flushing for a million gallons of bacteria free water without using fuel and time to boil.


• 1 x mosquito nets for each home,


• A small stock of Co-artem antimalarials was provided. 5 x non-mercury (Nex-temp) thermometers and a simple plan for treatment of fevers was taught.


• 1 x sturdy pair of EMS scissors, and some splinter removal scissors


• Stock of elastic bandages and sterile gauze for wound care.


• 1 x Silvadene ointment for skin infections and burns


• 1 x Hydrocortisone 1% for skin allergies


• 10 x tubes chloramphenicol eye ointment for eye infections


• 1 x liter Benzyoyl Benzoate for treating scabies


• 2,000 x Doxycycline antibiotics for home based use again based on simple treatment guidelines.


• 100 x Ciprofloxacin antibiotics.


• 1000 X Aspirin tablets.


• 1000 x Paracetamol (Tylenol, Panadol) tablets adult size.


• 1000 x Paracetamol tablets child size.


• 1 x AHP backpack


• 1 x Reusable shopping bag


• Pens, notebook, Felt tip marker.

Each AHP was instructed in the rational, non-poisonous use of modern medicines, along with guidelines on avoiding irrational or toxic medicines or herbs and on the use of safe garden herbals and medicines and supplies available over the counter in shops, like bleach (JIK) petrolatum jelly (Blue Seal Vaseline) denatured alcohol (Methylated Spirits), and vinegar for topical use.

In each case the AHP was instructed to use the limited professional health facilities available to them as liaisons between the Zambian health care system and their communities. Vaccination, TB treatments, HIV testing and antiretroviral therapies along with surgical and medical care available only through governmental and mission hospitals and clinics was promoted.

Student pastors Philimon Tudor and Tajloi Cunningham held church based revival meetings each evening. Pastor Troy Fitzgerald was at 6 am worships. Rob Holm fixed vehicles for the district pastor John Phiri, and showed Biblical DVD’s to the team up till 9pm in the evenings. His wife Lorelei Holm, RN joined Paula Elsom RN, Evelyn Boyd speech therapist, student nurses and premeds Vanessa, Hannah, Tucker, Rachel in giving lectures during the days. Dentist Jeff Schroeder and Dental Therapist Angela Farrow cleaned or extracted unrepairable teeth for the students and the local community. Deanne with help from all the above fed us 3 meals a day, and the 40 students at lunch, demonstrating new ways of using locally available foods for an interesting and innovative Zambian plant based diet.

Our pre-university team members also demonstrated ideas for cooking, filtering, and gave some appreciated lectures on health and spiritual topics, and made themselves generally useful. Megan Farrow, Cameron Fitzgerald, Justin Elsom, Matthew and Robert Holm made the trip fun as well as productive.

Some of you contributed a thousand dollars or more to this project. Others contributed what they could. Our Zambian partners found a perfect location for the program and the right people to take the course. This kind of cooperative coordination is known as church.

We thank Jesus for building the Seventh-day Adventist one.

John B. Hoehn, M.D. Adventist Health Medical Group 1111 S. Second Avenue Walla Walla, WA 99362 (509) 522-0100