Major Cutbacks in LFDS Services

Sorry for the tardiness in posting what has been happening in our lives. I have been consumed with trying to convince the gov't that a 60% cut in our flying budget for the next fiscal year (begins April 1) will result in massive changes and suffering. From what I understand (it is possible I don't have the whole story), the whole gov't is under tight budget scrutiny by IMF and World Bank, and various gov't entities have taken big budget cuts for this new fiscal year. Even though I submitted last August a request for increased funding for our flying component, I just found out two weeks ago that our budget was cut 60% from what we were able to spend this year.

So, I have spent the past two weeks going over finances, programs, invoices, etc. to see what we can do with the money they have budgeted. A large portion of our flying budget (80%) goes to transporting sick patients to/from the mountains. That cost is more than what we are given for next year so something has to change. The Lesotho Flying Doctor Services program is expensive as it involves flying, but it is the Lesotho Government's program. It costs money to fly sick people, clinic staff and immediate family, Doctor Team, Public Health Team, Environmental Health Team, Cargo (drugs, coal, wood, gas, food, coffins). It is heart wrenching to have to make these cuts but that is my responsibility as Manager, LFDS.

So, beginning April 1st, we will only fly what we call Code-1 patients. Those that have life threatening emergencies out of the mountain clinics. For example a pregnant mother whose labor is problematic as she can't give birth the normal way; or the man we flew out Wednesday that was semi-comatose; or the infant with pneumonia who needs hospitalization, etc.

Hopefully all will survive and we will be able to fly them back to their mountain clinics to get to their homes.

As far as the Doctor Team, we will continue to fly to the two health posts as they are places that have no clinic except what we provide when we go there twice a month. We will also go once a month to the two mountain clinics where there is no doctor stationed. The Public Health Care team (two nurses who do vaccinations and pre-natal care) will continue to go to the two health posts once a month. We will stop our services of eye care and dental care in the 7 mountain clinics that have a doctor stationed there. We will continue to fly our LFDS staff that work in the mountain clinics in and out on a monthly basis as per their agreement. And we will try our best to get the cargo where it needs to go as well.

These are drastic measures that have to be taken in order to provide some basic services throughout the coming fiscal year. I will be meeting again today with the gov't to 'beg' for the money to be able to do at least what we did this past fiscal year, but I am not very confident they will find the money.

Please join me in prayer in interceding for the Mountain Basotho as they will suffer from these cut backs, and for our LFDS staff as they also see the suffering. I'll keep you posted if things change.

Back from Kenya and in 'school' again

Got back from an awesome CMDA conference in Kenya. There were about 310 medical personnel from all over Africa including the teaching staff from the USA. It was a daily 'diet' of a breakfast of spiritual food, followed by a buffet of Continuing Medical Education, followed by some later afternoon exercise, topped off with some fellowship dessert. The morning spiritual food was brought by Dr. Robertson McQuilken, author of many books including 'Life in the Spirit.' I say a buffet of CME as there were 3 concurrent sessions for docs (1 for dentists) in Med/Peds, Surgery, Community Health. The late afternoon exercise was great as we had been sitting for the whole day and the running trails at Brackenhurst are just fantastic - lush semi-tropical yet highlands vegetation that in many places made a canopy for running under. Evenings concluded with singing and then 'reports' from the field sharing what God has been doing all over Africa in the area of Medical Ministry. It was intellectually challenging as well as spiritually stimulating - something both Sally and I needed. A special "THANK YOU" to Baptist Medical Dental Fellowship for paying for our way!

So yeah, we're back in language school again. Day two and my brain is hurting. We spent most of today going through an evangelistic tract I put together that is mostly Scripture passages. Our teacher, Me' Mamela (her name means 'listen'), was helping us get the pronunciation and emphases correctly. We spent over an hour and completed 3 sentences and 4 scripture verses only! Ouch...at one point I was sure that she was wanting us to make a noise like you are clearing your throat immediately followed by a sound only made by somehow blowing air by the sides of your tongue and making a 'l' sound. One of us practically spit on the teacher trying to make the sound, but she was quite patient with us. Me' Mamela has a PhD in theology and so we are 'picking her brain' as it were to understand some of the Basotho cultural innuendoes within religion.

I had made up a list of theological terms (English) and then went looking for them in the Sesotho Bible to see what word they used. Not as easy as I thought. For example, there isn't just one word for 'sin', but about 5 that I have figured out so far. Which one to use is dependent on the context. Wow, we have a long way to go. I want so much to be fluent in Sesotho in medical as well as Biblical language. Well, I need to do my homework...