A focus for several of the submissions for this current issue of the Christian Journal for Global Health is moral quandary in global health practice. A philosophical setting for the subject of personalist bioethics is provided by Jaime Hernandez-Ojeda and Pablo Requena. This will be a challenging read for many journal readers, but in substance it contests the disembodiment of much contemporary secular thinking regarding the whole person, seeking to recapture a moral and transcendent element in medicine. Eric McLaughlin puts flesh on these concepts with a moving account of personal insufficiency in the faceDOI link hypertext of need in Burundi and how to understand this in the light of God’s strength. His poem, A blessing for the crowd gathered by the morgue, carries this theme further. Alva Supit interviewed his colleagues on how they responded to the moral dilemma of gospel witness versus resuscitation in dealing with critically ill patients.
An original article describes an effort by Sarah Mayner and her colleagues to develop a measure of the potential impact which hospitals in a low resource setting might have. Their approach takes into account local circumstances, finances, operational effectiveness, external relations, and the experience of volunteers to develop an index to guide donors and volunteers wanting to apply material and human resources where they are most useful.
There are three field reports of interest from Indonesia. Lucky Buranda describes the introduction of a patient flow system for charitable clinics and its advantages toward more efficient care. I Wayan Gede Suarjana describes health problems experienced by Indonesian students and what might be done to confront these needs. Fotarisman Zaluchu writes about how climate change threatens local health traditions with long term loss of this knowledge and practice.
This year Zondervan published Stephen Ko’s Faith Embodied, a study of the link between faith and health. Keith So reviews the book and illustrates why this subject is so vital to many Gnostic-influenced cultures.
This issue contains an unusually rich offering of poetry. In addition to Eric McLaughlin’s poem, there are two by Reena George, one by Rheamy Baliber-Duallo and one by Stevy Silaban. We invite your comments on these and, indeed, all the content of the issue.
The editors invite you to contribute submissions in response to our new call for papers on Culture, Colonialism, and Global Health. The call offers details on how to speak into and research this important topic.