Columban Sr. Anne Carbon, a mental health nurse working in Lima, knew this was where her nursing background, compassion and missionary dedication were needed.

The years of violence took their toll on the country and an estimated 69,000 people died in the insurgency. Most were poor, Quechua-speaking peasant farmers in Ayacucho and nearby regions. The survivors were left to deal with the death or disappearance of loved ones, the destruction of homes and farms and the disintegration of families and communities.

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Data gathered by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Peru showed high rates of mental illness in areas that had been affected by political violence. Problems included alcoholism, depression, post traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, schizophrenia and suicide. The region has high levels of domestic violence as well.

In 2003, in coordination with local religious and civic groups and with minimal equipment and a volunteer nursing staff, Sr. Anne opened a small psychiatric clinic. Soon there were volunteer psychiatrists and psychologists, as well as other medical students, interns and nurses helping out. The work has grown from visiting a few patients in their homes to serving over 2,000 patients with psychiatric evaluations, treatment and rehabilitation programs.

In 2003, in coordination with local religious and civic groups and with minimal equipment and a volunteer nursing staff, Sr. Anne opened a small psychiatric clinic.

Project Mission

The Ayacucho Mental Health Clinic serves a population that lives in unremitting poverty. No one is turned away due to lack of funds. The goal is to provide treatment for the mentally ill including individual and group psychotherapy, drug therapy, medication management, home visitation (especially for high risk patients), ongoing family therapy, an alcohol and substance abuse program and a disabilities program for mentally challenged children and adolescents. The goal is for graduates of the program to reintegrate into the community, hold jobs and live with their families.

Funding and Sustainability

Achieving sustainability is an ongoing quest. Since the clinic serves people who are poor, it is difficult to envision the clinic becoming self-sufficient from patient reimbursement, although we continue to explore creative ways to meet this need.

In Pakistan, health care is not part of everyday existence. Tens of thousands are inflicted with curable diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria and polio. HIV-AIDS is a lesser but growing problem.

In particular, the statistics for tuberculosis (TB) are staggering: some 250,000 TB cases are registered every year in Pakistan, killing up to 60,000 people each year. TB, a disease of the lungs, is easily transmitted, so it spreads quickly. TB medication is expensive and difficult to obtain in Pakistan, and no new TB medicines are available to battle a disease that has often become resistant to drugs because traditional therapies haven’t been applied correctly.

Sr. Mariam Yaqoob, a Daughter of the Cross who works with the Columban in ministry, examined a young patient at the Columban medical clinic in Badin.

Against this tragic backdrop, Columbans seek to minister to Christians and others in this predominantly Islamic nation. Much of the ministry of Columbans and other Christian groups involves providing health care to people because the government does not.

Columban Father David Kenneally reports that just 4 percent of Pakistan’s annual budget goes to health care while 30 percent is spent repaying foreign debt and 35 percent goes to national defense. Much of this money earmarked for health care is misappropriated, and many health professionals simply do not report to their jobs. Families are forced to visit private clinics, which they cannot afford. They trade food staples such as goats or chickens for medical treatment for a loved one, leaving them without food.

“We help in the most-extreme pathetic situations when nobody else is interested in caring for people,” Fr. Kenneally writes. “There is no Red Cross or other aid agencies interested in the people we work with.”

Columbans working in Pakistan want desperately to save the lives of these poor people. They have three ongoing health-care projects that need your generous help in order to continue operations.

Health Outreach Program In Matli

Columban Fathers Joe Joyce and Tomás King serve a desert parish in the Sindh province village of Matli comprised of two ethnic groups: the Parkari Kholi and the Punjabi. The parish’s 130 villages of mud huts are built on land owned by landlords, and the villagers work as bonded laborers—they are the landlord’s indentured servants.

“It’s fair to say that the people we meet and work with each day live a life of toil and abject poverty,” Frs. Joyce and King write. “They work long hours in a hot climate and survive on a very poor diet. They suffer from many diseases and sicknesses.”

These Columbans rely upon a Catholic doctor in the parish who, on his one day off each week, travels voluntarily throughout remote parish villages with a health team to treat people—mostly women and children—with minor illnesses. These villagers are usually too poor to afford the medicine or the bus fare to a clinic or hospital.

The patients are examined and given medicine. The seriously ill are referred to a private hospital in Matli. In addition, sick parishioners come to the parish office looking for help for themselves or a family member.

“If a patient can afford even a little of the treatment, we take that as their contribution,” the Columbans write. “We see it as important that they, too, take responsibility, and we don’t want to encourage total dependency.”

Mother & Child Care Program In Hyderabad

Christians, Hindus and Muslims work harmoniously in the administrative and medical staffs of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in the city of Hyderabad. The hospital runs the Mother & Child Care outreach program in the poor areas of the city to address the needs of pregnant women, mothers and infants up to 2 years old.

The hospital now lacks the resources to cover the expenses involved in this essential outreach to women and infants in need.

Columban Father Robert McCulloch [right Columban?] is the new chairman of the nonprofit hospital’s administrative council and is working to ensure these outreach programs don’t fade away.

“The hospital is continually caught in the bind of trying to offer quality medical care to the poor at the lowest possible expense and, at the same time, trying to address needs through outreach programs,” Fr. McCulloch writes. “The mission of the hospital precludes it from generating large amounts of income. Without assistance, the outreach program will have to be stopped.”

Mother & Child Health Care Ministry In Badin

In the parish of Badin, women and children are at high-risk for disease and illness. The high cost of health care and quality doctors compounds the problem.

The Mother & Child Health Care Ministry helps these women and children by matching them with medical professionals who want to work with Pakistan’s poor. The patients are helped financially by the Columbans when they cannot afford treatment by providing medicine or paying doctors’ fees. When possible, the Columbans buy medicine at wholesale rates to save money.

“We have found that timely intervention can prevent illness from developing into more serious complications and becoming more costly,” Columbans Fathers Anthony Cavanaugh and David Kenneally write. “The services we provide are basic and commonplace in other countries with an adequate government health system.”

Please help Columbans’ health-care programs for the poorest of Pakistan’s citizens. Your tax-deductible donation, now matter how big or small, will pay for these projects and others like them.

Here is how your donations will help three Columban health-care programs in Pakistan.

$5 pays for …

• One month of iron supplements for an anemic expectant mother
• initial blood tests for a pregnant woman
• a health education chart
• gasoline for a three-village visit by a health team

$10 pays for …

• a week’s supply of nutrient-enriched supplements a newborn
• a blood transfusion set
• oxygen for a newborn
• X-rays and blood tests for diagnosing post-birth complications

$100 pays for …

• the safe birthing of a child
• post-services for a woman after giving birth
• two-months salary for a health visitor
• basic medicine kit for village health visits
• gasoline for a week’s village visitation in the desert
• a rabies treatment for a person bitten by a dog
• day treatment for a seriously ill child in intensive care

A therapy session

A Columban-run chemical dependency treatment center in Ozamiz City, the Philippines, is seeking to support itself by setting up a motorcycle repair shop operated by the center’s patients.

“Ozamiz is literally full of motorcycles with no specific repair shops for them,” explains Columban Father Martin Ryan, who helped start the “IT WORKS!” Center in 1997.

“We feel sure that the profit from this repair shop will be adequate to defray our monthly operating costs. We now are trying to raise $7,000 to purchase the necessary tools.”

About 650 clients are graduates of the Alcoholics Anonymous-style IT WORKS! 12-step program. The recovery program is a three-month residential spiritual course of therapy for those recovering from alcohol, narcotics, and other addictions.