German Institute for Medical Mission
| German Institute for Medical Mission eV (Difäm) |
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| legal form | registered association |
| founding | 1898 in Stuttgart |
| founder | Paul Lechler |
| Seat | Tübingen ( ⊙ ) |
| Office | Tübingen |
| precursor | Association for Medical Mission |
| motto | Health in the One World |
| Action space | worldwide |
| Chair | Gisela Schneider (Director) |
| Managing directors | Wolfgang Stäbler |
| people | Johannes-Martin Hahn (Deputy Board Member), Monika Harter (Assistant Director), Immanuel Stauch (Chairman of the Board of Directors) |
| Website | difaem.de |
The German Institute for Medical Mission (Difäm) is an organization for worldwide Christian health work based in Tübingen , at Mohlstrasse 26. The Difäm is organized as a registered association . The association accompanies and supports its partners in promoting health, especially for disadvantaged people in neglected regions, and promotes what it claims to be fair, sustainable and high-quality health care.
The association strengthens church health services by setting up and equipping health facilities with essential medicines and medical devices, improving the supply of medicines and training and continuing education for healthcare professionals. Prevention and treatment of infectious diseases as well as non-communicable, chronic and neglected diseases as well as the promotion of the health of mother and child are focal points of the work. When establishing basic health care, the focus is on the active participation of the local population.
The Difäm advises and supports project partners in Germany and in countries in the global south in strategic planning and in the conception, implementation and evaluation of health projects.
The association is the sponsor of the Tropical Clinic Paul-Lechler-Krankenhaus gGmbH in Tübingen and the Academy for Health in One World. The institute is involved in the action alliance against AIDS and is a member of the Diakonisches Werk Württemberg and VENRO .
Main focus of work and goals
Improve health
The Difäm health officers advise, accompany and support the project partners at home and abroad in the planning and implementation of health projects in economically poor countries and regions. The partners include church organizations, associations and partner organizations in development cooperation , such as Bread for the World - Evangelical Work for Diaconia and Development and action medeor , mission organizations and partners in the respective countries, including umbrella organizations for Christian health work and church health services. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo , the Difäm also supports the Nobel Peace Prize winner Denis Mukwege with project assistance, advice and further training for medical students and specialists. The association supports its partners both in medical work in health facilities and in community-run health work.
The focus of the association's work is on
- promoting mother and child health
- fighting infectious diseases such as malaria, HIV and ADIS and noncommunicable, chronic diseases such as cancer or diabetes
- strengthening and building local health systems
with the active involvement of the municipalities. In addition, medical professionals are advised and supported before, during and after their work overseas. In 2012 the association was active in over 100 countries and involved in around 60 projects. The priority countries are the Democratic Republic of the Congo , West Africa, including Liberia and Sierra Leone , Malawi , Chad , Kenya , India and Papua New Guinea .
The aim of the association is a world in which all people have access to the best possible health care.
The association has been involved in refugee work since 2015 and supports medical care in the state initial reception centers and emergency shelters in the Baden-Württemberg region.
Specialized office for pharmaceutical development cooperation
The Difäm department for pharmaceutical project work (formerly known as drug aid or the world pharmacy) advocates a comprehensive supply of drugs and the strengthening of pharmaceutical structures and quality controls on site.
The supply of medicines requires knowledge of how medicines are correctly dosed, properly stored and checked for quality. The specialist office therefore supports the training and further education of local specialists for work in pharmacies and hospitals. She also advises local project partners as well as development cooperation plants on setting up pharmaceutical supply structures.
In order to enable a safe and sustainable supply of medicines, the drug aid is also promoting the establishment of church central pharmacies in African countries. In order to bridge delivery bottlenecks , the AMH supports the provision of medicines and medical goods as the central procurement office in accordance with Section 47 of the German Medicines Act . In certain cases it also supports the local production of pharmaceuticals.
In many African countries there are poor quality medicines in circulation. And there are counterfeit drugs on the market that do not contain any active ingredients. They can only be identified through laboratory tests by trained professionals. In addition, the partners on site are supported in the quality assurance of their drugs by mobile compact laboratories , so-called minilabs , and analyzes in certified laboratories, such as MEDS (Mission for Essential Drugs and Supplies) in Kenya. For this purpose, the AMH equips its partners with the minilabs and trains them in their use.
In addition, the Difäm specialist office provides first-aid kits and first-aid kits for outgoing development cooperation experts .
Preparation of departures
As part of its Academy for Global Health and Development, the association prepares medical staff and development cooperation specialists for assignments abroad in seminars. The seminars convey knowledge about basic health care, tropical medicine , laboratory diagnostics , HIV and AIDS as well as planning, monitoring and evaluating projects according to international standards. Knowledge of how to maintain one's own health or that of one's family during a stay abroad is also passed on to those who leave the country in the courses.
Theological principle work
The World Council of Churches emphasizes: “The Christian Church [has] a special role in the field of healing. Christian action is primarily assigned to the congregation as a whole. ”Together with church partners, theological topics of health work - locally and worldwide - are formulated, reflected on and communicated. Health and health work relate to the individual and the community.
In cooperation with the Chair for Practical Theology at the University of Tübingen, the association initiated the project 'Parishes and Depression'. This shows, by way of example, that parishes in Germany also have tasks and opportunities in the health sector.
Information and education
A central component of the public relations work is the education of the population about the situation and grievances in the project countries and their background, about the causes of poverty, hunger, disease and violence as well as the acquisition of donations. With the campaign “Die Handy-Aktion”, the association, together with the regional churches and civil society organizations from Baden-Württemberg, wants to draw attention to the conditions for the extraction of raw materials and the grievances in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and to point out the global connections using the example of cellphone manufacture.
Private individuals, groups and parishes support the association.
history
founding
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The forerunner organization was the Association for Medical Missions , which the entrepreneur Paul Lechler founded in Stuttgart in 1898 as an aid association for the Basel Mission . It was triggered by the descriptions of the mission doctor of the Basel Mission, Georg-Eugen Liebendörfer , who told of the misery and illness in India as well as the possibilities that doctors had in the mission . As a staunch Christian, Paul Lechler was involved in various social areas, according to his motto: "Our Christianity must not just be a worldview, it must prove itself through action." Lechler's commitment in 1906, based on the English model, created the German Institute for Medical Missions Established with the aim of preparing outgoing doctors and nurses as well as theologians of the mission societies for their stay abroad and to train them in tropical medicine or to impart basic medical knowledge to them.
In 1909 the Difäm institute building on Nauklerstrasse in Tübingen was inaugurated in the presence of King Wilhelm II of Württemberg. A year later, the first medical students moved into the institute to train as mission doctors. In the same year, midwives were trained in cooperation with the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen . In 1916 a tropical convalescent home, today's Tropical Clinic Paul-Lechler Krankenhaus gGmbH, was inaugurated. Returning missionaries, mission doctors and their families should be able to relax and receive treatment here.
Since the founding of the Difäm, an extensive moulage collection was created with funding from Paul Lechler under the then director of the institute Gottlieb Olpp , the exhibits of which were mainly used for training in tropical medicine . Today the collection belongs to the museum of the University of Tübingen MUT . It comprises 73 moulages and contains extremely rare impressions of various, now almost extinct, tropical diseases and their various stages of disease. These include casts of yambo , gundu, cro-cro, but also plague , smallpox and the full moulage of a head infected with leprosy . Many moulages were removed by dark-skinned people, which is a rarity. In the summer and autumn of 2016, the collection was exhibited as part of the special exhibition "Illness as Art (form): Moulages of Medicine" in the Museum of the University of Tübingen.
War and post-war years
During the Second World War, the Difäm building served as an auxiliary hospital. In 1946 the institute resumed its regular work and trained doctors again. This was followed by a move to the premises of the former children's home in Paul-Lechler-Straße on the grounds of the tropical home. The latter developed over the years into a hospital with a focus on internal medicine , tropical and travel medicine and later acute geriatrics and is still active in these areas today as the Paul Lechler Hospital Tropical Clinic . 1959 saw the birth of Difäm drug aid when the then Difäm director Martin Scheel initiated a drug aid campaign for church health stations overseas. The campaign expanded to include drugs from doctors' offices and drug donations that were advertised nationwide. As early as 1961, Bread for the World supported the purchase of preparations that were important in southern countries and Diakonie Katastrophenhilfe had large broadcasts made available, for example for the victims of the Biafra war, via the Difäm drug aid. In 1969, the Difäm's medical aid reached a volume of 8 million DM (more than 4 million euros). Today the vast majority of medicines are procured locally from church central pharmacies.
Recent developments
In 1964 and 1967 two international conferences took place at the association on the question of the task of the churches in the health sector and the commitment of civil and church communities to promote health. Impulses from these conferences were received when, at the end of the 1970s, the World Health Organization, also in collaboration with the Health Commission of the World Council of Churches, proclaimed the idea of Primary Health Care in Alma Ata (1978) . The Difäm, in turn, took up these principles: The promotion and implementation of development projects for 'basic health' as well as specialist advice in the health sector set new priorities under the direction of Rainward Bastian.
In the 1990s, the HIV and AIDS problem came to the fore. The association responded with awareness-raising and education, provided the health stations overseas with HIV tests and disposable syringes and encouraged partner hospitals to stand up for people with HIV and AIDS, especially in home-based care programs. Ever since the possibility of HIV therapy was available (1996), the Difäm has campaigned for access to these drugs in economically poor countries. In 2002 the association initiated the alliance against AIDS . The action alliance is an amalgamation of around 100 non-governmental organizations and around 300 grassroots groups that campaign for universal access to prevention, care and therapy for HIV and AIDS. Today's director of the Difäm is Gisela Schneider.
financing
The association is financed by private donations, collections and bequests as well as allocations of church works and various foundations and regional churches. In 2014, the funds were used as follows: 75.44% for project funding and support as well as specialist advice (health services and AMH), 7.64% for administration and technology, 7.45% for public relations and study work, 4.85 % for specialist seminars and training courses, 4.62% for advertising and fundraising.
Memberships
The association is a member of
- Academy for Global Health and Development (Legal Entity)
- Action alliance against AIDS
- Pharmacists without limits
- Medical Development Aid Working Group (AKME)
- Umbrella Association for Development Policy Baden-Württemberg (DEAB)
- German Leprosy and Tuberculosis Aid (DAHW)
- Diakonisches Werk Württemberg
- ECPAT Germany e. V. (Working group for the protection of children against sexual exploitation)
- Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance (EAA)
- Ecumenical Pharmaceutical Network (EPN)
- Evangelical Missionary Work Germany (EMW)
- Erlassjahr.de e. V. - Development needs debt relief
- Health Action International
- Association of Development Non- Governmental Organizations (VENRO)
It is also a founding member of TransFair and the Institute for Foreign Relations.
Publications
The association provides regular information about its work in the projects in the following publications:
- Health in One World magazine
- Annual report
- Email newsletter
- Project flyer
Individual evidence
- ↑ 100 years of Difäm, p. 32.
- ↑ Start page: Handy-Aktion. Retrieved July 11, 2018 .
- ↑ https://www.wkgo.de/institutionen/deutsches-institut-fr-rztliche-mission
- ↑ Difäm.de , see there the section History of Difäm .
- ↑ Anke Strölin: Wax Body. Moulage collection . In: Ernst Seidl (ed.): Collections. Museum of the University of Tübingen MUT , 4th expanded and supplemented edition, Tübingen 2015, p. 63.
- ^ Moulages of Medicine - MUT Tübingen . MUT (Museum of the University of Tübingen), accessed July 11, 2018-07.
- ↑ 100 years of Difäm, p. 30
- ↑ euro.who.int (PDF; 80 kB)
- ↑ 2014 Annual Report, p. 27
literature
- Jakob Eisler: Called to help. 110 Years of the German Institute for Medical Mission ( DIFÄM ) - 100 Years of the Tropical Clinic Paul Lechler Hospital Tübingen , Association for Württemberg Church History, Stuttgart 2016 (Small Writings of the Association for Württemberg Church History, No. 21), ISBN 978-3-944051-14 -7 .
- Christoffer H. Grundmann : The first facility of its kind - misunderstood! The "Medicinische Missions-Institut zu Tübingen" 1841–1848 . In: “Building blocks for the history of the University of Tübingen”, Volume 4 (1989), pp. 35–90.
