Medical Missions Survey Gets Great Response
April 9, 2025
By Ellen Dailor, M.D.
Thank you to everyone who responded to the recent survey about medical missions. We had an excellent response and received many thoughtful comments.
Of the respondents, approximately half have participated in international medical missions and over one-third have participated in free health care for the poor in the United States. Seventeen percent are planning to participate in missions in the future.
It is encouraging to see how many people have some experience with or commitment to missions and the care of the poor. Responses included projects in 35 countries with so many different organizations and different kinds of projects. Others reported financial support of many organizations with various priorities.
Our hearts are breaking for Haiti and Nicaragua for whom service has become extremely difficult to provide because of the volatile situation in those countries making it unsafe to travel there. However, our members continue to serve alongside our colleagues in other countries and settings. We have posted several Catholic sending organizations on our website, but we are interested in connecting our members with other reliable organizations and would love to hear from you about organizations that could be added. There seem to be many small programs occurring between parishes and hospitals. We would be happy for members involved in these small projects to share their experiences. Possibilities for ways to share these projects include the Medical Missions Interest Group Presents program, here in The Pulse of Catholic Medicine news section, or directly to the Missions Committee.
Although we support the care of the poor in the United States, particularly in partnership with Novus Medicus and the Catholic Social Teaching on Justice in Medicine Committee, the Missions Committee has focused on international missions for several reasons. While there is much need, the American health system has significant resources for the care of the poor. American Catholic physicians have the resources to care for poor patients in our communities and to support their more expensive care as appropriate. CMA and Novus Medicus are happy to hear of more opportunities for our members to support this care and to evangelize our culture through health care.
The needs in low- and middle-income countries are much greater. Around 10% of the world’s population is living on less than $2/day and half are living on under $7/day. Imagine trying to run a fee-for-service hospital with your catchment population living at this level. Most of those living in extreme poverty are in sub-Saharan Africa, but we also have closer neighbors living in poverty. In many of these places, we have a thriving Church with a beautiful spirituality with whom to partner and bear witness. In other places, evangelization is needed in addition to medical care for those living in extreme poverty. Both in the US and abroad, the need for the Catholic understanding of the dignity of the human person is desperate. Catholic apostolates serve the poor in a way that other faith-based and government ministries cannot. Because they do not provide abortion or contraception, these Catholic ministries must provide advanced medical care for high-risk pregnancies and the necessary family and marriage support required to facilitate the use of natural family planning.
Catholic health systems who primarily serve the poor are in great need of financial and moral support from Western Christians; as in the US, they can be vulnerable to the influence of anti-Christian ideas. The next question that arises is how best to participate in and support Catholic health care for our brothers and sisters living in poverty and for those who do not know Christ. There were several comments on this in the survey and this is a major area of consideration for our committee. In the next column, I will review some of the models and considerations relevant to our membership.
The survey was anonymous, so we are unable to respond to specific issues, but feel free to reach out by emailing [email protected].
Dr Ellen Dailor is the Chair of the ad-hoc Medical Missions Committee for CMA.