We had a great weekend at Chisamba Safari Lodge with Elsa and Lars and their children. Luke tried swimming for the first time and Richard held a snake for the first time. It was good to get aware and good to spend time outside of the Mission with our friends.
Lars is a teacher at the High School and is a great guy. Elsa is the children's doctor at the hospital and is a remarkable lady. Chikankata are very blessed to have them here I wrote an article about 3 women as part of a series of article of Women of Faith involved in women's ministries within the Salvation Army. It has now been published in 3 different SA periodicals now. Here is the extract on Elsa....
When Dr. Elsa is on call at The Salvation Army’s Chikankata Hospital—where Catherine works on the administrative staff—she often races to the rambling white building at 3 AM to deal with an emergency.
It may be a mother from a nearby village with serious complications who requires an immediate Caesarian section to deliver her baby. Dr. Elsa, trained and ready, focuses on the problem in the operating room and sees it solved before returning home for a couple of hours of sleep before she begins her first ward rounds at 7:30 AM. Being a doctor at a Salvation Army hospital is no ordinary job, but then Dr. Elsa is no ordinary doctor.
Elsa Bjorkqvist left her home in Sweden to work at the Chikankata Mission Hospital in July 2006. Deep in rural Zambia, Chikankata is virtually a million miles from the practice and lifestyle she left behind in northern Scandinavia. Her journey took her from one of the best healthcare systems in the world to one of the worst, if World Health Organization statistics are accurate. According to Dr. Elsa, however, this is what she wanted to do since she was a teenager. “I’ve always had a calling to work with those in poverty and the marginalized, especially women and children,” she says.
With a 200-bed general hospital, six rural health centers and daily mobile clinics for children and HIV/AIDS patients, Chikankata Hospital has provided both facility and community-based healthcare to people of all ages for over 60 years. As one of only three doctors serving a catchment area population of over 80,000 people, Dr. Elsa shoulders responsibility for care of women and children in the hospital and surrounding communities. This means balancing the demands of mothering her own three children with serving as hospital doctor in a land where almost 20% of the people are HIV positive, and one in five children die before age five.
Dr. Elsa is called upon to do anything and everything. She can be found in the operating room, the outpatient department or the HIV/AIDS Center. She travels out with the mobile clinics and accompanies the League of Mercy members on home-based care visits each month.
Dr. Elsa daily sees mothers of young children who need health education, plus emotional and spiritual support. Add this to the pediatric and maternity wards plus with malaria patients and malnourished children. Clearly her ministry represents a holistic approach that most of us talk about but never see. The women in the region know Dr. Elsa and are well aware of her care, commitment and compassion for them.
For Dr. Elsa, working at Chikankata is much more than a medical practitioner’s job; it’s a ministry. She says she feels free and liberated to be working in an Army hospital, for she can minister to each patient every day during her rounds. “I always try to spend some time with the women, to pray with them and just be a presence,” she says. “I want them to see that I love them, but more important, that God loves them.”
Zambian rural culture means that polygamy, plus other demeaning and risky sexual rituals are widely practiced. The role of women is usually subordinate to men; they are often treated as second class citizens. Dr. Elsa says, “One of the most important aspects of my ministry is to encourage women and point out the positive things they do as mothers.”
While the medical side of her job is important, Dr Elsa believes it is only one part of her holistic approach to working with women. “I want the women in our area,” she declares, “to know they are valued and special to God.”
Walking away from the hospital, Dr. Elsa is stopped by a woman, a widow whose six-year-old son is ill with HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. He’s a patient in the hospital. The woman thanks the smiling doctor for all she has done for her child; then she places a bag of groundnuts from her own garden into Dr. Elsa’s hands.Then stepping close so she can hug the doctor, the woman says she is a Christian and her faith has grown stronger because of Dr. Elsa’s work and ministry at the hospital.
It may be a mother from a nearby village with serious complications who requires an immediate Caesarian section to deliver her baby. Dr. Elsa, trained and ready, focuses on the problem in the operating room and sees it solved before returning home for a couple of hours of sleep before she begins her first ward rounds at 7:30 AM. Being a doctor at a Salvation Army hospital is no ordinary job, but then Dr. Elsa is no ordinary doctor.
Elsa Bjorkqvist left her home in Sweden to work at the Chikankata Mission Hospital in July 2006. Deep in rural Zambia, Chikankata is virtually a million miles from the practice and lifestyle she left behind in northern Scandinavia. Her journey took her from one of the best healthcare systems in the world to one of the worst, if World Health Organization statistics are accurate. According to Dr. Elsa, however, this is what she wanted to do since she was a teenager. “I’ve always had a calling to work with those in poverty and the marginalized, especially women and children,” she says.
With a 200-bed general hospital, six rural health centers and daily mobile clinics for children and HIV/AIDS patients, Chikankata Hospital has provided both facility and community-based healthcare to people of all ages for over 60 years. As one of only three doctors serving a catchment area population of over 80,000 people, Dr. Elsa shoulders responsibility for care of women and children in the hospital and surrounding communities. This means balancing the demands of mothering her own three children with serving as hospital doctor in a land where almost 20% of the people are HIV positive, and one in five children die before age five.
Dr. Elsa is called upon to do anything and everything. She can be found in the operating room, the outpatient department or the HIV/AIDS Center. She travels out with the mobile clinics and accompanies the League of Mercy members on home-based care visits each month.
Dr. Elsa daily sees mothers of young children who need health education, plus emotional and spiritual support. Add this to the pediatric and maternity wards plus with malaria patients and malnourished children. Clearly her ministry represents a holistic approach that most of us talk about but never see. The women in the region know Dr. Elsa and are well aware of her care, commitment and compassion for them.
For Dr. Elsa, working at Chikankata is much more than a medical practitioner’s job; it’s a ministry. She says she feels free and liberated to be working in an Army hospital, for she can minister to each patient every day during her rounds. “I always try to spend some time with the women, to pray with them and just be a presence,” she says. “I want them to see that I love them, but more important, that God loves them.”
Zambian rural culture means that polygamy, plus other demeaning and risky sexual rituals are widely practiced. The role of women is usually subordinate to men; they are often treated as second class citizens. Dr. Elsa says, “One of the most important aspects of my ministry is to encourage women and point out the positive things they do as mothers.”
While the medical side of her job is important, Dr Elsa believes it is only one part of her holistic approach to working with women. “I want the women in our area,” she declares, “to know they are valued and special to God.”
Walking away from the hospital, Dr. Elsa is stopped by a woman, a widow whose six-year-old son is ill with HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. He’s a patient in the hospital. The woman thanks the smiling doctor for all she has done for her child; then she places a bag of groundnuts from her own garden into Dr. Elsa’s hands.Then stepping close so she can hug the doctor, the woman says she is a Christian and her faith has grown stronger because of Dr. Elsa’s work and ministry at the hospital.
It seems Jesus always has time for the women of our world, thereby demonstrating their value to Him, and in Zambia Catherine and Elsa obviously have time, profitable, well-spent time, for them, too.
posted by Charlie Chikankata at 10:14 pm
2 Comments:
You have a fantastic post today!
10:12 pm
What a great blog! I have hopped over from Louise at 'somewhere groovee'.
This is fascinating stuff - you are doing a wonderful job out there - and experiencing things (like herds of hippo on your shopping trips?)that you wouldn't elsewhere.
Hope you don't mind me passing on your blog to my 'blog friends'?
10:22 am
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