History of Yirga Alem Hospital in Southern Ethiopia

Lindtjørn B. The role of a mission organization in building a sustainable government hospital in Southern Ethiopia. Christian Journal for Global Health.7(2):133-46.

This study details the intriguing history of Yirga Alem Hospital in Southern Ethiopia under the aegis of the Norwegian Lutheran Mission since the middle of the last century.

In 1950, the Norwegian Lutheran Mission (NLM) began holistic mission work, including health work in Yirga Alem in Sidama in Southern Ethiopia. The hospital, which had served as a military hospital during the Italian war (1936-41), became a mission hospital. This paper presents some historical developments of a government hospital managed by a mission organization, the story of its medical work, and how the NLM functioned under varying political regimes and societal environments in Southern Ethiopia. At the same time, societal changes occurring in Norway with the weakening of mission organizations and the Norwegian governments policy that influenced external financial support for the hospital are presented and discussed. The key message of the paper is that it is possible under challenging external politics for a mission organization to collaborate with government entities even with difficult regimes. In the area of Yirga Alem Hospital, this was done without compromising the basics of mission, but rather readjusting comparative strategies while ensuring sustainability and local ownership. The uniqueness of this work is that it explores a mission, i.e., the NLM, which developed health work within the context of a nationally owned health service. Moreover, this fruitful collaboration persists until this day and previous missionaries still work to strengthen public health programs that target such major areas as tuberculosis and HIV control, maternal health, childcare, and nutrition.

The paper can be downloaded here: http://bernt.w.uib.no/files/2020/07/351-Article-Text-5479-3-10-20200628.pdf

The Templeton Prize

This year’s Templeton Prize was last week awarded Francisco J. Ayala. Professor Ayala, a geneticist and biologist and a former Dominican priest, has opposed entangling science and religion while calling for mutual respect between the two. He denies that science contradicts religion, and says “they cannot be in contradiction because science and religion concern different matters, and each is essential to human understanding.”

Ayala’s research is also on parasitic diseases such as trypanosomiasis and malaria. He developed accurate ways to read genetic clocks to find out the timing of steps in the evolution of a species. Recently, he and colleagues determined that malaria was likely first transmitted from chimpanzees to humans a few thousand years ago, and that gorillas and chimps may serve as reservoirs for the parasites that cause human malaria.

Earlier prize winners vary in their views on thought, science and religion, and include people such as Billy Graham, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn John C. Polkinghorne, and Bernard d’Espagnat. These represent persons with different views on science and religion than what Ayala advocates, and Science recently wrote the John Templeton Foundation, which awards the Templeton Prize, in recent years has become more mainstream..

You can read more about Ayalas works on science and religion at http://www.templetonprize.org/currentwinner.html