by Laurie Elit
Members of the Humanitarian Health Ethics group have varied motivations for their involvement in low resource settings. Some people travel to these settings for academic reasons trying to study the situation in order to improve things. Some travel to provide health care for people who would otherwise not be able to access such services. I was asked to comment on the motivation that has kept me involved in short-term missions. My first out-of-Canada low resource mission was a 5-month stint as a medical student in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. Over the years I have found myself in various contexts such as medical educator (Guyana), surgeon (Kenya, Nepal, Haiti, Bangladesh, Pakistan), researcher (Brazil) and implementer of a national cervical screening program (Mongolia). It was in Mongolia that I was asked the same question that Humanitarian Health Ethics asked me to comment on here.
I have learned that we can look at our world from various vantage points (or worldviews). Worldviews change over time and across societies. There are worldviews particular to oral (tribal), peasant (low hot flat coastal areas/high rugged mountains), modern (first global culture or rationalist), post-modern (advanced capitalist, glocal) societies. Biblical refers to the human understanding of the world from God’s perspective as given in scripture. As a physician, I have been trained under the assumptions put forward in the modern and late modern perspective. As a Christian, I continually have to reckon this with the biblical worldview.