Medical Work Teams
Bongolo Hospital has a limited number of openings each year for short-term medical volunteers who can pay their own expenses. In general we have five categories of medical volunteers:
- Board-certified surgeons, GI endoscopists, pathologists, and radiologists who want to help train and disciple our PAACS residents.
- Ophthalmologists, optometrists, and ophthalmology nurses
- Non-surgical physician specialists.
- Laboratory technicians, X-ray technicians, biomedical engineers or technicians, physical therapists, and chiropractors.
- Nurses and medical students.
Sending Agencies
- Increasingly, the Short Term Missions Office (STMO) of the Christian & Missionary Alliance (Tim@stmogabon.org) is becoming the major agency for volunteer nurses and nursing students who do not speak French, or volunteers that the hospital cannot accommodate because of space.
- Surgeons (and the other specialty physicians listed above) wishing to help train and disciple the PAACS residents at Bongolo Hospital should go through Dana Foster at Samaritan’s Purse (dfoster@samaritan.org).
- Ophthalmologists and optometrists wishing to help out short term should contact Dana Foster at World Medical Mission.
Special Considerations
- Nurses and medical students must be able to speak and understand French to serve at Bongolo Hospital, since their work requires them to work semi-independently. Apart from the missionary team, the hospital has no translators, and fewer than 1% of Gabonese speak English.
- PAACS residents must be fluent in English to be accepted, so physicians working with the PAACS residents do not need to speak or understand French.
- Non-surgical physician specialists who do not speak French will need to work with members of our missionary team. This will limit the number of volunteers we can accept, since it depends on their availability.
- Since the hospital is a ministry of the Gabon Alliance Church to help the sick and share with them the good news of Jesus Christ, all volunteers must be unashamed followers of Jesus Christ and willing to conform their lifestyles to meet the Gabon Alliance Church’s standards.
- Volunteers must be able to pay all their own expenses in advance.
