by Friends of Mandritsara Trust
How important is the laboratory to the work of the Good News Hospital in Mandritsara? The answer is that the laboratory has a vital role to play:
The Good News Hospital Laboratory
Firstly in diagnosis. It is in examining the blood that a diagnosis of malaria, or anaemia, or leukaemia or diabetes can be confirmed. It is by examining the cerebro-spinal fluid that a diagnosis of meningitis is confirmed. Examining urine in the lab will confirm bilharzia or urinary infection, and examining stools will show if the patient has intestinal parasites.
The lab also has a very important role in the treatment of certain patients – particularly in finding and preparing compatible blood to transfuse to a patient with severe anaemia or blood loss.
And the management and monitoring of treatment may also involve the laboratory – for example in anaemia or diabetes.
The laboratory at the Good News Hospital has fulfilled all these roles since the first day of the Good News Clinic on 1st February 1995.
Annie’s story
The laboratory story commenced when Annie McColm, an Australian laboratory technician, was introduced to the missionary society, Africa Evangelical Fellowship, in November 1988. She felt God calling her to missionary service and heard of the need in the laboratory at AEF’s Luampa Hospital in Zambia. She applied to serve for a short-term mission service there and flew to Zambia in May 1989.
Annie in Luampa Hospital laboratory
After serving 18 months in a busy lab, gaining experience, and having her call to mission confirmed to her, she returned to Australia in November 1990 and completed a one-year diploma at Bible college in Brisbane. Towards the end of 1991, she was asked by AEF to consider joining the team who were planning to enter Madagascar in early 1993 for the start of the Good News Hospital.
In the meantime, she was working at Queensland Medical Laboratories in Brisbane. Her boss came in one day and said, “We have a problem with a lot of equipment and furniture that was cleared out of a laboratory in New South Wales – it is stored in a warehouse and needs to be given away.” Annie immediately replied, “Give it to me and I’ll take it to Madagascar!”
She received more items from other hospital laboratories. In fact God wonderfully provided all the equipment required to set up a laboratory in the planned rural hospital in Madagascar. Now Annie had to buy a container to ship it all. God provided an excellent container, and a freight forwarding agent, and the container was packed full and sent to Madagascar in late 1994.
Some of the equipment and supplies were set up in a room in the little Good News Clinic near the airstrip in Mandritsara when it opened in February 1995. Annie was the lab technician there from day one.
Meanwhile, Johan Coutigny, the Belgian missionary who was overseeing the Good News Hospital construction, had asked Annie to suggest the layout of the laboratory in the new hospital. Annie used the design of the Luampa Hospital laboratory to set up the furniture donated from Australia. It all fitted perfectly and was a wonderful provision from GOD. (Johan and his wife Ann had also previously been working at Luampa).
Annie in the Good News Hospital laboratory
But Annie needed a helper in the laboratory. How could she find staff in a town where there were no trained laboratory or hospital workers? One day Annie met a lovely Christian lady, Mme Marline, walking past her house and fell into conversation with her. “I felt she is the woman God wanted to work alongside me,” says Annie, “talking to patients, sorting and preparing specimens and cleaning.” And indeed she was. Marline served faithfully in the laboratory for the next 30 years and loved to tell the patients about the Lord Jesus. She retired in 2025.
Marline, Annie and Debbie
From then until now
Once the hospital opened in June 1996, with the much larger and well-equipped laboratory, Annie started to train Malagasy laboratory technicians on the job. Debbie Simpson, a lab technician from Northern Ireland, joined in 1998 and gradually the number of locally trained Malagasy lab technicians grew. The lab has performed a vital role in showing the love of Christ to patients through the care and skill of the workers, and it has also been a place where patients passing through can hear the message of the gospel and receive gospel tracts from the lab team.
Some of the current lab team
And the future…?
But, as the hospital, and the corresponding laboratory work, has grown, it has become clear that the laboratory needs more space. And so a vision has developed to build a new, and more adequate, laboratory, to cater for the needs of the patients. But where to put it, and how can it be financed? These have been matters of prayer for the team in Mandritsara and for Friends of Mandritsara Trust for some time.
A site was identified near to the hospital waiting area and outpatient rooms, and not far from the wards. Then our friends from Samaritan’s Purse, who have been very generous in their help for the hospital in providing equipment, right back from the early days in 1996, offered to help. They are not only able to help with funding, but also with technical skill and experience, having supported many Christian hospitals around the world. Their gifts, along with gifts from other generous supporters, have provided the funds for the planned new building. And, crucially,
Samaritan’s Purse have helped with the design, and with the choice and provision of much of the equipment needed.
New laboratory construction - foundations and floor
New laboratory construction - aerial
Do praise the Lord with us for His wonderful provision, please pray for the construction and setting up of the new laboratory, and pray for the lab team – all now Malagasy – as they seek to serve the patients and make the Lord Jesus known.
Save the Date
Friends of Mandritsara Hybrid Prayer Day - 18th April, London
Join us from 1:00pm for lunch with the prayer meeting starting at 2:00pm. There will be the option to join online, and further details will be sent out closer to the time via the stories emails. Click Here for more info.