A Medical Mission to Liberia: Notes from the Field

Liberia, the home to 5.6 million people, clings to the western coast of Africa like a verdant jewel. Its English-speaking people are the descendants of freed American slaves who were repatriated to the African continent in the early 19th century and the indigent Africans these repatriated African-Americans found on their return. 

Declared an independent nation in 1847, Liberia, along with Ethiopia in Eastern Africa, was the only nation spared from the infamous, late 19th-century “Scramble for Africa” imposed by the European powers that colonized the continent. 

Unscathed by fights for independence from colonial overlords, Liberia was one of the more stable countries in Africa for the first half of the 20th century.  

But the 1980s brought civil war to the nation and after 14 years of conflict that featured violent warlords and drugged and heavily armed “child soldiers,” the nation was devastated, both economically and morally. 

After these conflicts were resolved and a relative peace prevailed in Liberia, I led a medical mission to Liberia in 2007, to help address the medical needs of the country. 

While there we saw first-hand the effects of war. The country was “wrung out,” broken and exhausted from a bloodbath that cost the nation 250,000 lives and depleted it of virtually  all its resources. The nation’s infrastructure was destroyed and the average Liberian’s income had plunged to a mere 12% of what it had been before war ruined their lives. 

The past 17 years have brought Liberia political stability, but the country still lags economically. Its economy was further harmed by the Ebola epidemic which hit the nation particularly hard during the mid-years of the past decade. Today, the United Nations considers Liberia “one of the poorest and least developed nations in the world.”  

With this in mind, Lighthouse Medical Missions, a Santa Monica-based Christian organization that I lead, went back to Liberia with another medical mission team in October of this year. Our clinic was based in a small church building in one of the poorer neighborhoods in Monrovia.

During our time there, we cared for over 1,300 needy and desperate patients. As the pediatrician in the group, I attended to over 300 children, many of whom suffered from severe malnutrition, leaving them listless and developmentally delayed. Most of these children’s mothers, young women in their late teens and early twenties, were likewise malnourished.  Sadly, the fathers of these children were uninvolved in their lives.

During our time there, we cared for over 1,300 needy and desperate patients. As the pediatrician in the group, I attended to over 300 children, many of whom suffered from severe malnutrition, leaving them listless and developmentally delayed.

Similar to our last visit, we found Liberia a country that is still broken despite nearly 20 years of relative political peace. Poverty persists throughout the nation and medical care is absent for most of its citizens. Public hospitals, like John F. Kennedy Hospital, the largest health facility in the country, are grossly underfunded. During this trip we met with the CEO of JFK in Monrovia, and she shared openly with us the pressing needs the hospital faces.  

We also met with the U.S. Ambassador to Liberia, Mark Toner, who likewise shared with us the challenges Liberia faces, despite over $5 billion in foreign aid from the United States over the past decade. 

What we also found in Liberia was another kind of poverty: a poverty of values. The physical misery that Liberians experience is not due to a lack of resources in the land; Liberia is a land rich with potential. Instead, Liberia’s poverty comes from moral and spiritual penury.  

I know this may sound naïve to some, but one answer to Liberia’s social chaos and profound poverty may well be found in Mosaic law.  

The corruption that grips the land is due to a covetous spirit, a sin according to the Decalogue. Covetousness leads to envy, jealousy and theft, a rampant problem in the country…especially within the government.  

Lying (bearing false witness) likewise burdens the country. No one trusts anyone.  Liberians are wary of their fellow Liberians. This general lack of trust undermines business development and creates a culture of self-concern that detracts from working together to solve broader community problems. 

Finally, adultery and a general culture of hyper-sexual promiscuity are likewise endemic in Liberia. The mothers, whose malnourished children I cared for, universally lacked husbands and none of these mothers were receiving financial help from the men who impregnated them. They were on their own. As a pediatrician, I know firsthand how much effort it takes to raise a child. These sweet young mothers clearly loved their children dearly, but they had been abandoned and left destitute by their erstwhile lovers. This was one of the saddest situations I dealt with while there.  

I could go on, but after spending time intimately involved with the Liberian people and listening to their stories, this was my admittedly biased takeaway: Judeo-Christian values would elevate Liberian society and bring to the nation a prosperity they deserve. 

May G-d bless the nation and the people of Liberia.

Dr. Hamilton is a general pediatrician who practices in Santa Monica, California. He and his wife Leslie have been married 51 years. They have 6 children and 13 grandchildren. He has led over 25 medical mission trips to the African continent.