Health for All

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Political and Economic Turmoil.  Sickness and Spiritual Darkness.  A Hospital Without Running Water.  And 250,000 People in Need of a Doctor.

When Dan Fountain and his wife arrived in the Congo in 1961, the challenges to effective medical missions seemed overwhelming. As the only doctor for a quarter of a million residents of the Vanga Health Zone, and with nothing but a dilapidated mission hospital and an undertrained staff to run it, Dr. Fountain turned to prayer, innovation, and local partnerships to meet the vast needs of his area.

Health for All tells the story of an ever-increasing vision—from curative care to community health, from a barely functioning hospital to a network of successful health services, from a lack of qualified workers to a local residency training program, from biomedical reductionism to whole person care, from cultural stalemate to worldview transformation. 

Dr. Fountain’s insights into health and wholeness have changed countless lives and communities. Part memoir, part history, part textbook, Health for All is the legacy of a man who patterned his life and labor after that of the Great Physician.

[/DESCRIPTION] [SUBTITLE]The Vanga Story[/SUBTITLE][CREDIT] Daniel Fountain [/CREDIT] [PAGES] 236 [/PAGES] [BINDING] Paperback [/BINDING] [PUBLISHER] William Carey Publishing [/PUBLISHER] [PUBLISHYEAR] 2018 [/PUBLISHYEAR] [ENDORSEMENT1]

Health for All, Dr. Fountain’s magnum opus distilled from thirty-five years’ experience as a physician in the Congo, provides some of the most important insights into missions available anywhere today. A master of cross-cultural communication second to none, Dr. Fountain has unique insights into the problems in medical missions today, the problems we have when healthcare is reduced to physical care, a biblical approach to healthcare, how to make healthcare financially sustainable, and other issues at the core of development. His discussion of animism alone is worth the price of the book—and not just for those who practice in “developing countries.” In a day in which thousands of would-be world changers are crying for role models, Dr. Fountain’s amazing personal story inspires and informs. This ought to be a required textbook for anyone even considering doing cross-cultural healthcare.

Carolyn Klaus, MD [/ENDORSEMENT1] [ENDORSEMENT2]

I highly recommend Dan Fountain’s new book, Health for All. This is a capstone for his multiple books on wholistic healthcare as well as his books and articles on total healthcare systems. I appreciate his thematic approach, which gives the history of the different themes of the Vanga story, a health system in the Congo. Dan has been the father of faith-based total healthcare systEMS, from hospitals through clinics to community healthcare programs, and Vanga is the result. Vanga’s impact has been unmatched with its focus on decentralized rural healthcare. Don’t miss it!

Stan Rowland [/ENDORSEMENT2] [ENDORSEMENT3]

In this book Dr. Fountain provides an amazingly clear understanding of the role that medical missionaries should assume in empowering and partnering with the people whom they serve. He establishes not only the philosophical and social context but a real biblical understanding, while sharing practical methods of how to accomplish real health and healing, using to great effect the history and success of his own very significant work in the Vanga Health Zone of Congo. His unflagging commitment to community health and training in a culturally sensitive way and the results that it produces, comes through in chapter after chapter. Reading this book, I am reminded why he has been my teacher about crosscultural healthcare and the priority of the gospel in that work. And I will read it again and again and be taught by him once more. His ideas have the depth of being timeless. This book is a must-read for anyone contemplating short- or long-term medical missions.

John R. Crouch, Jr. MD [/ENDORSEMENT3] [ENDORSEMENT4]

I strongly endorse Health for All for all those involved in mission outreach of any kind. Dr. Daniel Fountain, together with his wife, Miriam, has been one of the most respected and influential figures in medical missions during the past half-century—up until his recent death in 2013. Over several decades of medical work in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dr. Fountain developed and modeled a wholistic approach to medical care, an approach which has been adopted not only by Christian mission organizations worldwide but also by the World Health Organization. This book is a stirring first-hand account of Dr. Fountain’s contributions in the Congo, which have led to a virtual revolution in medical missions around the world. Promoting health is integral to promoting the gospel of Christ; this book explains why and shows how to do it.

Thomas Hale Jr., MD [/ENDORSEMENT4] [TOC]

Foreword

Introduction

1. The Vision

2. Beginnings

3. Multiplication: Training Health Workers

4. Decentralization: Getting Primary Healthcare to the People

5. Community Health: Preparing the Foundation

6. Bringing Traditions and Science Together

7. Culture Makes Almost All the Difference

8 Animism and the Gospel

9. From a Mediocre to a Quality Hospital

10. Training Competent Physicians for Africa

11. Putting the Whole Person Back Together

12. HIV: The Great Challenge

13. Population Dynamics and How to Influence Them

14. Management as Partnership

15. Running a Health Service in a Bankrupt Economy

16. Healthcare and the Christian Faith

17. The Missionary Call

Bibliography

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