Marie, Bernadette

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The Linacre QuarterlyVolume 34 | Number 1 Article 14February 1967Sisters in the MissionsBernadette MarieFollow this and additional works at: http://epublications.marquette.edu/lnqRecommended CitationMarie, Bernadette (1967) "Sisters in the Missions," The Linacre Quarterly: Vol. 34 : No. 1 , Article 14.Available at: http://epublications.marquette.edu/lnq/vol34/iss1/14Sisters in the Missions SISTER BERNADETTE MARIE, S.C.M.M. The need for woman · doctors in India led to the founding of the Medical Mission Sisters in 1925. The Society has grown from four to more than seven hundred members and has hospitals in thirteen coun-tries of Asia, Africa and South America. It would take more than thirty years, at the rate of one new hospital a month, to fulfill all the requests made by mission Bishops, according to Mother Anna Dengel, M.D., foundress and Superior Gen-eral of the Medical Mission Sisters. Rawalpindi, now the capital of Pakistan, was the scene of the Sis-ters' first work. They found that the scope for medical work among the women, whose customs pre-vented treatment by male doctors, was vast. . Gradually they estab-lished a full-scale hospital with a school of nursing and midwifery. Holy Family Hospital in Rawalpindi has 200 beds and is well known in the region, especially for obstetrics and gynecology. It is not unusual for patients to be brought from vil-lages several hundred miles away. Each year more and more women attetnd the ante-natal clinic and come to the hospital for delivery. Forty years ago, when the Sisters started their work in Rawalpindi, women considered a hospital deliv-ery a last resort in case of emer-gency, and a normal case was a rarity. In contrast, 80% of the deliveries in 1965 were normal. For the first twenty years, the 46 medical Mission Sisters concentrated on India and Pakistan. In 1948 they opened their first hospital in Africa in Berekum, Ghana (then the Gold Coast). The Berekum hospital now has a well-established school of nursing and has been asked by the Ghanaian govemmen\ to train all the midwives in thf Brong-Ahafo region. Besides oper ating two hospitals in Ghana, th{ Sisters staff a Government-ownec leprosarium. The leprosarium's out patient service includes finding an: treating patients in their village~ The Medical Mission Sisters' wor : in Africa has extended to Malaw , the Orange Free State, Keny. , Uganda and the Congo. . On another continent, the Siste s staff three hospitals in V enezuel : .. To help meet the need for qualific :l nurses, they started a school 1f nursing in their Maracaibo hospit ~ l. Last year, when the University )f Zulia in Maracaibo opened a schc )1 of nursing, they asked the Medic 1l Mission Sisters to take charge of -t. The university course is a milestor e, since nursing has not previou: i.y been considered by Venezuelans to demand a high level of education. Other countries where Medic-al Mission Sisters work are Jordan, Indonesia, the Philippines and South Viet Nam. Since the Sis1 rs opened their hospital in Qui Nhon, South Viet Nam, in 1961, they have seen it change from a fish ing village to a military port. Many of LIN ACRE QuARTERLY their patients are refugees. One of the Sisters wrote recently that with the perpetual noise of bombs, planes and trucks, it is a real challenge to hear a fetal heart. Medical Mission Sisters are edu-cated as doctors, nurses, nurse-midwives, pharmacists, technicians, therapists, ~s well as in a variety of non-medical professions needed for hospital and administrative work. They study on both Catholic an~ secul~r campuses, mostly in Phtladelphta, Washington, Atlanta, St. Louis and San Francisco where their houses are located. S~me al-ready have their professional edu-cation when they enter the Society. About fifty of the Sisters are doc-tors. During the past year, two returned to the United States to take Board examinations after sev-eral years in India and Pakistan _ Sr. M. Frederic Niedfield passed the ~m~rican Board of Surgery exam-InatiOns and Sr. Miriam Paul Klaus those of the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Several others are already Board diplomates, and some are now in residency pro-grams. As the medical standards of dev~loping countries rise, full pro-fessiOnal qualification is becoming necessary. The Medical Mission Sisters aim FEB:RUARY, 1967 toward providing a complete range of health services in their . hospitals and to educate the local people in these services. Teaching, formal or informal, is always going on, and is a lasting contribution to the coun-tries where medical develcipntent is slow ?ecause of an acute shortage of tramed personnel. · Future development of the Society will take it into closer and closer cooperation with governments of these developing countries. Sister Miri-am Hoover, American Provin-~ial, wrote in the July-August,· 1966, Issue of The Medical Missionary "I ' n certain areas, such as South America, the government-supported health prog:ams in each country are slowly trying to provide ·care for the entire population. As these plans develop, the possibility of pri-vate hospitals becomes more remote. This type of development brings unprecedented opportunities to med;.. i~l missioz:aries for working along With and mcorporating themselves in to these vast new programs. When standards are being set and goals defined, the Christian influence must not be missing." [SISTER BERNADETTE MARIE, the author, wrote this from the provincial headquarters of the Medical Mission Sisters in Philadelphia.] 47 

Sisters in the Missions

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