Sociologist Judith Lasker, author of the 2016 book Hoping to Help, worked with the Catholic Health Association on a study that showed that about half the money spent on medical missions goes for travel costs for the teams. The groups were competing for donations - and even for volunteers. How It All BeganĪfter it was founded by a reconstructive surgeon at Stanford University, Interplast soon became a popular model for flying teams of doctors and nurses into remote areas to provide medical services otherwise not available.Īccording to a case study by the Stanford Graduate School of Business, by 2002 another 104 organizations were running short-term reconstructive surgery clinics around the world. That process proved to be a battle - it's tough to change mindsets - but it had huge rewards. More than two decades ago, Interplast began what has become a near-complete makeover. The group that pioneered reconstructive surgery fly-ins back in 1969 was one of the first American medical missions to rethink its mission. "There are a lot of concerns about what happens when these missions leave, and there's a lot of concern that the care they're providing may not be culturally appropriate" - or even wanted by the people on the ground. "Missions are recognizing that there's a lot of criticism being leveled at them," says Lawrence Loh of the University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health, who studies short-term volunteering. At conferences and in academic papers, health professionals are asking: Is this really the most effective way to provide health care to the developing world? A 2016 estimate put the annual cost of getting doctors and other health care workers to sites around the world at $3.7 billion, paid for by donors or health personnel themselves.īut today there's some real soul-searching going on about this kind of fly-in. There are for-profit missions as well that collect fees from volunteers, mostly students. Today, missions are sponsored by churches, universities and charities. Soon other medical groups as well were traveling to remote areas of the world, where they performed heart surgery, cataract removal, hernia repair, dental care and more.
They were among the first teams of Western docs to take part in fly-in missions. The team members donated their time, paid for their travel and lodging and sometimes their supplies, and got to do good.
They operated on children with cleft lips, cleft palates or burn scars so thick their limbs were immobilized. charity called Interplast began flying to poor countries to do reconstructive surgery. In 1969, volunteer teams of doctors and nurses from a U.S.
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