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Medical Missionaries and the Role of Evidence

October 3rd, 2014 | 7 min read

By Matthew Loftus

Slate's Brian Palmer is right: missionary medicine in Africa is largely unregulated, unstudied, and understaffed. I have seen with my own eyes—and performed with my own hands—clinical decisions that would rightly be considered malpractice in a developed setting because they required that procedures or medications used reserved for specialists be attempted in order to save a life (ask me sometime about the time I did hand surgery.)

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Matthew Loftus

Matthew grew up in a family of 15 children and completed his medical training in Baltimore, Maryland. Since 2015, he and his family have lived in East Africa, where he currently teaches and practices Family Medicine at a mission hospital. His work has appeared in outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Atlantis, and Mere Orthodoxy and his first book is forthcoming from InterVarsity Press. You can learn more about his work and writing at www.matthewandmaggie.org.

Topics:

Ethics