Here's the answer, but what was your question again?

Where there is Christian mission there are also medical doctors. For centuries these colleagues have packed their belongings and shipped themselves to the other end of the world to do a noble and most of the time not so easy a job. Along with other things they've taken with them their western medicine and social thinking. It can't be beaten for sure.

Medical aid promotes Christian faith and little by little locals want to know more. Motivation for this can be caused by a number of things. Churches are established and they grow by number. One day that congregation might be sending a missionary of their own to a far away land. This is the big picture.

I was surprised to discover how little research has been done of the role of medical work in the field of mission. These days our work and education is all about evidence based methods. But that does not seem to apply for the ones in the jungle.

I managed to get a hold of few articles criticizing western medicine and the inability for priests and medical doctors to work alongside. The publication used a particular African tribe as an example, but I think this can be applied to nearly anywhere.

As a representative of western medicine I listen and examine a patient usually with only one thought. What is the right diagnosis and then, how should I treat this. Sometimes I decide to see the patient later on again, but for most that one appointment is it. If I manage to answer those two questions in a way that pleases both the patient and myself, I'm usually content and forget the whole case. This is pretty much the method used by the doctors described in the article.

However for the locals, which this article describes, getting sick and cured was much more than that. They wanted to know the cause and understand it. They wanted to be cured in a holistic way and moreover the same should be prevented from happening later on. This way of approaching diseases was provided by the traditional healers and their methods pleased their customers. Needless to say the end results weren't always successful and the treatments sometimes cost a fortune.

With the arrival of foreign medical doctors the statistics got better. But a healthy patient was not always a pleased one. Western medicine felt so superb it kinda forgot there ever was any other sort. Or the possibility of learning from others.

I often find myself in a situation where the patient is somehow dissatisfied without either one of us being able to point a finger at a particular problem. It is likely that non-medical answers are expected from us and a wake up call could do good for the whole system of health care. Here the traditional method could be of aid. Maybe there's plenty to be found in the toolbox of the traditional healer as well as in his style of approach.