from http://www.abc-usa.org/2013/03/27/im-establishes-the-daniel-fountain-medical-memorial-fund/

In view of Fountain’s passion for the training of future international medical missionaries in a Christ-centered model of healthcare, the construction of a training center at Vanga in the DR Congo is part of this dream. This fund, along with IM and the network of colleagues sharing this vision, can open the possibility for realizing that dream.

Vanga is a rural community in the Bandundu province of the DR Congo. The medical work at Vanga started in 1912 with an American Baptist medical missionary, William Leslie, M.D., who built the first hospital building in 1920. During the next forty years, the hospital grew into a 100- bed rural mission hospital. At the time its focus was primarily on curative care administered through general medicine, surgery, pediatrics, and obstetrics. Since July 1960 the hospital has been run by the Congolese church and staff.

Dr. Fountain arrived in September 1961 with the vision of working with those already at Vanga to establish a Christian Congolese integrated health service to meet the health needs of the 250,000 people in the hospital catchment area. The initial step was training, so in 1962, a school for mid-level health practitioners – young men as nurse practitioners and young women as nurses and/or midwives — was established. Over the succeeding years, this permitted the hospital and local churches to build a network of health centers staffed by graduates of the Vanga medical training institute. By 1985, fifty such health centers were in place, giving complete coverage of the population with primary health care services.

During the mid-sixties, a community health outreach began working in the communities surrounding Vanga, always through local Protestant and Catholic churches and health centers. This resulted in improved sanitation, protected springs, improved nutrition, better management of the land and forests, and increased mother and child care. More than 300 communities established a development committee to motivate people to improve their own health conditions and to supervise health and development activities.

In 1978 a two-year family medicine residency began in the Vanga Hospital. This became approved in 1986, and in 1996 it grew to a three-year residency under the supervision of the Medical University of Southern Africa in Pretoria.

The team approach to caring for the whole person, attempting to meet the psycho-social and spiritual needs of patients as well as their physical needs, grew when a well-qualified Congolese woman pastor became part of the hospital staff as the spiritual caregiver. The medico-pastoral team worked to integrate and address physical symptoms with spiritual needs for all their patients, as Jesus did in his healing ministry. This ministry proved especially important as it offered affirmation and hope to the growing number of persons with HIV. As HIV crept slowly throughout the rural area, educational efforts to prevent its spread also became an integral part of the health service.

From the beginning, the health program at Vanga operated on a fee-for-service basis in order to maintain a sustainable program. In spite of the economic collapse of the country, this self-financed approach has proven effective. None-the-less, considerable investment of outside resources permitted the progressive development of the infrastructures of the health service and its outreach to more distant communities.

The hospital currently is a 450 bed multi-specialty teaching hospital with a staff of six physicians, 50 graduate nurses, and 6 – 8 family medicine residents. The rural health zone of 50 health centers is staffed by 60 nurses and 120 administrative and logistics personnel.

From http://urmccf.org/teaching/daniel-e-fountain-md-mph/ A graduate of Colgate University, the University of Rochester School of Medicine (1956), and Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Daniel E. Fountain served with his wife Miriam as a medical missionary in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) from 1961-1996 with the American Baptist Board of International Ministries. During that time, he was the director of health services of the Baptist Church of Western Congo and the director of Vanga Evangelical Hospital. Through their efforts and those of the Baptist Community of Western Congo, the Vanga Hospital grew into a 400 bed teaching hospital with a nurses training school, family medicine residency, a rural health zone of 50 health centers serving a quarter of a million people, a church-based community health program reaching over 300 villages, and a whole-person care ministry to persons with HIV.

Dr. Fountain is the founder and former director of several health programs in Africa, including a health care training institute and a rural health care network. In 1984, he and Rev. Felicity Matala established an integrated medical-pastoral care ministry in the Vanga Hospital for the healing of the whole person which he directed until his return to the US.

A recognized authority on the treatment of persons with AIDS, Dr. Fountain has been the recipient of numerous awards for community health service, including being given CMDA’s “Servant of Christ” Award at its 2006 National Conference. Early in his career he was designated one of the “Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Year” by the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce in 1964. In 1996 Map International granted him its “Outstanding Medical Missionary Award” for his service in the Congo, and more recently he was honored by CMDA with its 2001 “Missionary of the Year Award.”

Dan has served as an Associate of MAP International, as a founding board member of Project MedSend, and from 1996-2001 as a Consultant to Southwestern Medical Clinic in Michigan. He currently serves on the faculty of the Christian Medical and Dental Association’s Continuing Medical Education Program and as an Assistant Professor at King College and Director of their Global Health Care Center masters degree program.

He is also the author of numerous books in English and French on community health and primary health care, including God, Medicine and Miracles; Primary Diagnosis and Treatment; Let’s Build Our Lives; and Health, the Bible and the Church. Dr. Fountain teaches internationally about the importance of caring for the whole person.