MAP International

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Towards A Healthier World

Medical Assistance Programs International ("MAP") is a non-denominational Christian organization dedicated to improving the health of those impoverished people around the world who often do not receive the medicines and health care they need. Originally, MAP's efforts to meet these needs consisted primarily in supplying medical missions groups with the medicines they required, but MAP gradually expanded the scope of its mission to include a variety of operations through which they can exercise a more comprehensive impact on those they serve. Now also focusing on local community health development and the reduction/elimination of particular diseases, and working in over 115 countries, MAP is a major force in the worldwide effort to provide the poor both with immediate aid and with help towards the development of sustainable means of making their communities more healthy.

Total Health

A genuine understanding of MAP's work must begin with an understanding of the ideal which guides that work, an ideal it refers to as "Total Health." The significance of "Total Health" comes from several important biblical words, for example Christ's usage of "abundant life." Another significant word is the Hebrew word "shalom," which can be translated simply as "health" but more accurately signifies a wide-ranging peace, contentment, and completeness. Also, the Greek verb "sozo," though most easily translated as "to heal" can also be taken to mean "to save," as in the salvation offered by Christ. Total Health is viewed by MAP as the ability of individuals, families, and communities to promote their own spiritual, physical, emotional and social well-being. As MAP says, "The emphasis is on the ability of people, individually and collectively, to transform their own well-being through God's power working in human lives." This ability can only be truly present in a community when its inhabitants no longer suffer under oppression (in all of its forms), when they have undergone a genuine spiritual renewal, when they have been reconciled with any previous enemies, and when they have been equipped with all of the theoretical and practical tools they need to begin living, with God's help, the abundant life as it was described by Jesus.

MAP thus seeks to go far beyond a merely physical understanding of health cut off from the wider factors which make physical health desirable in the first place. Rather, MAP has sought to connect its work with some of the greatest themes of Scripture, with redemption, wholeness, reconciliation, etc. For MAP, concepts such as those on which the idea of "Total Health" is based demonstrate the essential connection between health and salvation in the Gospels. This both influences the sorts of programs MAP is involved in (i.e., their efforts to educate people in Bolivia, Ecuador on human rights, sexual abuse, and children's rights issues) and allows them to place their disease-related work in its proper perspective. Thus, far from succumbing to the sorts of rather narrow and fragmented goals that characterize some organizations, MAP instead places its work in the widest context possible for a Christian organization.

MAP's Partnerships

MAP's headquarters are located in Brunswick, Georgia, but they also have offices in Washington, D.C., Kenya, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Uganda, Ecuador, Bolivia, Indonesia, and Honduras. The extent of their influence is magnified even further, however, through the many agencies, organizations, and medical missions they partner with all around the world. These include CARE, Christian Aid Ministries, WorldVision, the International Medical Corps, and Children International (and this is only a small sampling - MAP works with more than 300 other organizations in all). MAP is also a member of various medical relief and Christian accountability/support organizations such as the ECFA, INTERACTION, the Integral Alliance of Christian relief agencies, AlertNet, and the Partnership For Quality Medical Donations. And, finally, MAP enjoys a large number of corporate partnerships -- among the pharmaceutical corporations which have donated medicines to MAP (of which there were more than sixty-five in 2007) are Pfizer, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, and Boehringer Ingelheim.

MAP's Programs

MAP divides its work into three broad categories: the "provision of essential medicines," the "prevention and mitigation of disease," and the "promotion of community health." The first, the provision of medicines, can again be broken down into several distinct areas. First would be MAP's Travel Pack Program, one of their most distinctive projects - here, MAP provides US-based medical mission teams going abroad on short-term trips with portable pharmacy boxes containing a variety of medicines that will be useful to them. Each MAP Travel Pack contains over 700 treatments. The missionaries must only pay a service fee to receive the packs, and the medicines in the packs are chosen by MAP staff in accordance with the diseases most typically found in developing countries. MAP also carries out a wider program of donation to all kinds of health clinics, agencies, and missions hospitals, again charging only services fees for the donated supplies. And, finally, they also provide medicine to doctors and relief workers aiding victims of either natural disasters or violent conflict. All of the medicines are FDA-regulated and high quality, and most of them are donated directly from one of the many major U.S. pharmaceutical corporations who partner with MAP.

For the "prevention and mitigation of disease" aspect of their mission, MAP has concentrated its forces in Africa and Latin America, where certain diseases, most notably HIV/AIDS, have had a crippling effect on many developing communities. MAP has been an active advocate, addressing itself to both church and government officials, for further measures against AIDS to be taken in many of these Latin American and African nations. In ten African countries MAP has also trained pastors and church leaders in AIDS prevention strategies that they can incorporate into their churches' activities. Two of the other diseases which MAP has particularly focused on are the Guinea worm parasite and Buruli ulcer. The Guinea worm, a particularly damaging and painful (though non-lethal) parasite which was relatively common in Côte d'Ivoire several years ago, has apparently been almost completely eradicated through MAP's efforts to purify the water that carried the parasite. The Buruli ulcer is an extremely common (and very expensive to treat) disease which is common among poor communities in the developing world though almost unknown in the West. MAP's efforts to combat this disease (again in Côte d'Ivoire and in conjunction with several partner organizations) have consisted in the construction/refitting of two health clinics and education programs for the communities most susceptible to the disease. MAP has also engaged in vaccination campaigns, reaching thousands of people, against Hepatitis A in Ecuador and Hepatitis B in the Philippines.

And, finally, in order to promote community health, MAP has sought out members of at-risk communities to be what they call "community health promoters" and then has provided them with training towards this end. In Ecuador, Côte d'Ivoire, Kenya, and Bolivia MAP has trained over 1200 of these health promoters over the last five years. The training largely emphasizes learning how to detect and prevent diseases (the practical components of this will range from action to ensure that food and water supplies are safe to encouraging better standards of personal hygiene to the promotion of immunization), but it also, in keeping with MAP's goal of "Total Health," deals with issues such as animal husbandry, self-esteem, conflict resolution, sexual abuse, and gender roles. Among their other accomplishments in this area, MAP makes note of the sixty community health promoters from indigenous associations they have recently trained in Tena, Ecuador (located in the Amazon basin) to help their communities understand better the root causes of poverty and disease; the one-hundred and fifty health workers they trained last year (2007) to help treat those in the war-torn villages and camps of northern Uganda; the seventy members of World Vision's Ecuador staff that they instructed in "concepts of total health, community organizing, and community-based health care"; and the more than 10,000 Bolivians they trained last year in sexual abuse prevention.

Although mentioned above, a brief note should be made of two further aspects of MAP's work. First are their efforts in disaster relief, an extremely important part of their ministry. MAP has responded to many different humanitarian crises - ranging from the conflicts in Afghanistan, Chad, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Hurricane Felix in Central America to a deadly earthquake in Peru - with medical supplies and other forms of emergency aid. Second is their MAP Medical Fellowship Program, which provides fourth-year medical students with an internship and travel expenses to and from an impoverished community in the developing world of their choosing. The goal of the program is to develop a "lifelong involvement in global health issues" on the part of the students and to do it all in a "Christian context" (the internships are all in mission agencies and hospitals).

Approach to the Gospel

As seen from the Statement of Faith posted above, MAP's theological commitments situate it for the most part within the mainstream of orthodox evangelical Christianity (for some seeming exceptions see the "Critics Might Say" section). MAP affirms the Trinity, Jesus' status as the Son of God (and the savior of our sins and the provider of eternal life), its own desire to follow the teachings of Jesus as they are outlined in the Scriptures, and so on. Elsewhere MAP makes the nature of its Christian commitment understood through its lengthy discussions of "Total Health," its affirmation of its need for God's guidance and of prayer and Bible study as a means to this, its hope that the end results of its work will be "transformation in Jesus Christ," its desire to both properly enjoy and be good stewards of God's creation, and its talk of its own "Christian witness" consisting in the sharing of the "holistic gospel."

All that being said, it should be noted as well that MAP does not mention specifically any attempts at evangelism on its part. Although it is made quite clear in their materials that they wish to help those they serve to experience "transformation in Jesus Christ" perhaps by "words and service to others," there is never any mention of MAP staff specifically presenting the Gospel message to those they are serving in the hope of bringing them into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Although it is impossible to know for sure, since MAP's materials never speak directly to the subject, it should probably be inferred that MAP favors a more indirect approach to evangelism and/or has a different slant towards conversion than do the many evangelicals who think of conversion as always being the first order of business in missions.

Model of Efficiency

Using the most recently filed financial reports from MAP International (as of July 1, 2008), MAP received an overall financial efficiency rating of five out of five stars from MinistryWatch.com and ranked 16 out of 56 ministries within the Relief and Development sector (and 24 out of 416 ministries within the entire MinistryWatch.com database). This high rating is due to the fact that MAP is able to allocate 99% of its annual expenses directly to its programs. This does need to be qualified, however. As the rankings cited above imply, the Relief and Development sector tends to be overrepresented in the competition for MinistryWatch.com's top financial efficiency slots. There is not a large gap between the financial efficiency ratings of the top Relief and Development sector organizations. The primary reason for this efficiency is the fact that organizations like MAP are dealing largely with gifts-in-kind (i.e., non-cash items such as medicine). On the whole these sorts of donations are much easier to attract than would be the equivalent in pure dollars (in MAP's case, the majority of the medicines they receive are donated from pharmaceutical corporations who may view such donations in part as opportunities to bolster their public images and to get rid of medicines they have been unable to sell), and thus organizations like MAP will tend to come out on top in the financial efficiency rankings simply due to the nature of their work.

True as this may be, it does not diminish the fact that donors to MAP's work can be confident that their gifts will go almost entirely towards helping provide medicines and better health care to the world's poor. It also should be noted that MAP has received the highest possible transparency grade, "A," from MinistryWatch.com. MAP goes beyond just talk of being open, they demonstrate financial transparency. MAP has posted on its website multiple years of its audited financial statements, IRS form 990s, Annual Reports, and its IRS Determination Letter.

Medicine and Theology

With its global reach, commitment to financial transparency, and efficient use of resources, MAP ought to be an appealing option for every donor looking to make a gift to a Relief and Development-oriented ministry. Perhaps even more than any of these reasons, however, MAP's commitment to a truly holistic conception of health stands out. Based on some of the most comprehensive (and beautiful) ideals for human life found in the Scriptures and connecting nicely with MAP's practical work, "Total Health" constitutes a significant attempt on MAP's part to articulate a theology of health which both places their medical work in perspective and provides us with a distinctly Christian vision of the future. Although donors will have to take account the theological reservations mentioned above (and in the "Supporters/Critics Might Say" sections), this combination of factors allows MinistryWatch.com to recommend MAP to all interested donors.