by Andry, Community Health Team Leader at the Good News Hospital, Mandritsara
The Helimission helicopter comes to Mandritsara every couple of months to help the Good News Hospital
Community Health team reach remote and isolated villages with health care and gospel outreach. The helicopter comes from Monday to Friday to fly several small teams of health and gospel workers to these distant villages. A recent visit took a team to the village of Sahavia, some 50 miles south of Mandritsara in the rain-forest.
Glory to God, the mission to Sahavia made it possible to save two lives at once.
The team had worked a long day, seeing patients, vaccinating children and pregnant women, giving health education, and, in the evening teaching the Bible message of Jesus. Around midnight, a cry for help interrupted a good night’s sleep. A group of people had arrived at the house where the team were staying, begging them to save the life of a woman who had tried in vain to give birth in her village. Some of her family members, and others from her village, several hours away, had carried her on a traditional stretcher. She was exhausted after a difficult and prolonged labour. Neither the nurse in her village nor the traditional birth attendants had been able to help her.
The baby is alive and well!
With a small glimmer of hope, knowing that the Good News Hospital team was at Sahavia, and although it would be a long and exhausting walk, the family decided to take the pregnant woman there. And in the wonderful providence of God, one of the team who had come from Mandritsara was one of the hospital midwives. If this had not been the case, the rescue could have been far more difficult, and would probably have failed.
For the family, saving the mother’s life at all costs was what mattered. Our midwife did her best to deliver the baby using improvised techniques (having the mother blow into a bottle), and the baby finally came out — but already seemingly lifeless.
But of course, the midwife was not content with having saved the mother’s life – she wanted to save the baby.
There was no resuscitation equipment available, so drawing on her experience, the midwife used the tubing of her stethoscope to breathe air into the baby’s lungs. After some eight minutes of trying, thanks be to God, the baby started to breathe.
Keeping the baby warm crop
But when the baby was given to his family, they did not want him. They had seen him, as they thought, stillborn — and perhaps they thought it was still a lifeless body that the midwife was handing them. So the midwife kept the baby warm by the fire in the meantime.
We later learned that the mother’s parents are committed idol-worshippers, so superstition may have been another reason for rejecting the child, whom they saw as cursed for having nearly taken his mother’s life. When the baby was returned to the family, they perhaps still thought he was dead, so they refused him and left him on the ground. The whole family was thankful for the mother’s survival, but appeared not to care about the baby.
Our midwife, however, would not give up, and tried everything to persuade them that this was a healthy child who deserved their love. Finally, his mother accepted him and took him in her arms and put him to her breast. She said she loved him, and in the morning they went home, safe and well.
But not before they had heard something of the love of God who sent His only Son to die that we might be forgiven for our sins and come to Him.
Please give thanks to God for this wonderful token of His love. And pray for the Community Health Team and all who go with them to bring health care and the gospel of Jesus to folk in the literal “regions beyond.”
Pray for safety for the helicopter and the pilot, and for the staff that they might be given wisdom and help dealing with situations often beyond their training and knowledge, and pray for spiritual as well as physical salvation.