Notes used by Dr. L. C. Grant in his appearance before the S.I.M. Council in Jos in about November, 1956, to request permission to build a hospital in Jos, later to be known as Evangel Hospital.

During my first term on the field, I was on a number of occasions called to the Nursing Home for consultation on problem cases and so were other of the mission doctors. A message would come that we were needed in Jos, a place would be sent, and we would leave our work for 2 or 3 days to make the trip to Jos and see the cases for which we were called.

Because of this not uncommon necessity, it seemed to me that it would be greatly to our advantage in caring for missionaries to have one or more other mission doctors stationed nearby to be available when needed at the Nursing Home. As you know, there is not enough work at the Nursing Home to keep two doctors busy regularly. But there are many times when the one doctor stationed there does need help. So it seemed to me that as we consider opening a new medical work in Nigeria, Jos offered an excellent location because of its proximity to the Nursing Home and should be considered. That is when I began thinking of Jos as a place for a general hospital. Of course there are many other advantages in Jos:

1. Population center
2. The cosmopolitan nature of the population affording us the opportunity to minister to people from most of the tribes of Nigeria and from of the surrounding countries.
3. The better-than-average transportation facilities to and from Jos
4. The availability of electricity and running water in Jos
5. The nearness of our HQ dispensary and commercial drug houses and canteens
6. The possibility of hiring locally, at least partially-educated African help and not having to import them from distant places.

To me Jos seemed an ideal location. So I discussed this with Mr. Davis on more than one occasion and then, when I left for the U.S. three years ago, asked him if he would approach the government about the possibility of building a General Hospital at Jos. Everyone said there wasn't a chance of getting government approval. Mr. Davis applied to the Resident and was turned down flatly.

He informed me of this while I was in the U.S. I wrote back that although the door seemed closed for the present, I did not believe that was necessarily the end of the matter and felt that I at least should continue to pray about it.

Well, within a very few months I was surprised to receive the news, because I hadn't expected it so soon, that the government had reversed their former decision and had given approval for the hospital. Then soon afterward word came that a site had been granted for the hospital—and an excellent site at that. It certainly seemed that the Lord was leading.

I wrote to Dr. Cummins whom I had known since college days at Wheaton and with whom I had gone through medical school and asked him to join me in the venture. We had always worked well together and I felt that I needed his help. He was very much interested and when he arrived in the States last summer we discussed it further, worked on hospital building plans together, and made other plans for the hospital.

We began the planning of program for training Africans as hospital and dispensary attendants, lab technicians, physiotherapists and make tentative plans for later on training nurses and midwives and actually feel that the training program might well become our most fruitful work.

There was one fly in the ointment, however. When a copy of the letter of approval form the DMS [Director of Medical Services?] was sent to me, I noted that the approval was for a specialized hospital for Internal Medicine. I wrote to the field to try to get this clarified but could get no further information on it. Neither Dr. Cummins nor I felt that it would be worthwhile to start such a limited type of hospital.

When I arrived on the field, I learned that application had been made for a hospital limited to Internal Medicine so that the government had really given us what we asked for. So when Dr. Troup met with a government official in Kaduna three weeks ago he told them how we felt about starting such a limited type of hospital and was assured by the DMS and Dr. Binns that the government would raise no objection to our accepting and treating any type of patient that we choose. In other words, they had given us the green light to operate as a general hospital.

That's where se stand now. Dr. Cummins is in America waiting for the signal to start raising money for the hospital.

Show plans—drawn by Christian architect—another of the Lord's provisions.

Cost estimate: [What currency?]

Bldgs 30,000
Small bldgs 3,400
Equipment 22,300
Staff houses 12,000
Total: 67,700

Staff:

2 doctors
4 nurses
Staff - 1 lab technician
1 man to have supervision of the spiritual work and to serve as hospital manager

What we hope to accomplish:

1. Give medical care to sick Africans—not an unworthy task, should we do less than Samaritan on road?
2. Witness to patients and attempt by every reasonable means to win them to Jesus Christ—very concerned that the spiritual work should in no way be secondary to medical work but should keep fully abreast of the medical work.
3. Train African Christians as hospital and dispensary attendants, lab technicians, physiotherapists and possibly later, nurses and midwives in the hope that these will in turn use their medical abilities as a means of spreading the Gospel in this country so that we multiply our efforts to lead the lost to Christ.

The important thing here is not the cost of the hospital or the staff it will require, but the important thing is that we know the Lord's will in this matter and that we do it. I have no doubt that this venture is of the Lord. He will provide for it in response to our prayer and faith.

I have felt that He was leading us in our plans for building at Jos. To be quite frank about it, the objection of some of the mission leaders to the project makes me wonder if I have been mistaken in interpreting His leading. But if He is not leading us to build this hospital then it seems strange that:

1. Permission for a hospital in Jos was granted—contrary to previous government policy
2. A site was granted for the hospital right on the outskirts of Jos—and a site so excellent that I don't know where a better could have been found.
3. Government has given us the green light to operate as a general hospital.

The important thing is that we know the Lord's will in this matter and I am as anxious as you are to do that will.

Advantages of Center over Bush Site

1. Population center
2. Cosmopolitan population
3. Electricity for lab equipment, X-ray, OR lights, physiotherapy
4. Running water—essential
5. Nearness of H.Q. dispensary and commercial drug houses and canteens
6. Local availability of partially educated African help
7. Transportation facilities to and from Jos
8. Increased probability of ministering to African leaders

The practice of medicine today is a very complex thing (much more complex than the average non-medical man appreciates) and the operation of a hospital is far from simple. If you add greatly to our difficulties (and in the bush these are increased) then you lower the grade of medicine which we are able to practice and reduce our effectiveness as medical men.

Medicine is today a highly specialized science. Although the art of medicine is important, nevertheless our success in healing sick people depends largely on how well we practice our science. I know form experience both in the bush and in a center that it can not be done as well in the bush with the 1001 hindrances that are not found in a center.

Better to have our hospital in a center where we can give the best care, and then develop a good ambulance service for bush dispensaries than to put the type of hospital we have in mind out in the bush where the doctors are continually frustrated in their attempt to give good care.

I see no excuse for doing an inferior sort of medicine just because we're working on Africans. If I'm going to do medicine out here, it has to be first class. I think we would be just as wrong in compromising on the quality of our medicine as we would in compromising our principles of right and wrong. I expect to practice the same high degree of medicine out here as I practiced and was expected to practice as a staff physician in a V.A. hospital in America—that is exactly same quality as is practiced in the Mayo Clinic or at Duke Clinic or the various hospitals associated with medical schools at home. If that is what you want our here, then I can enter into it whole-heartedly. If that is not what you want, then I think you should tell me frankly. But for my part, I want nothing to do with a sloppy, inadequate sort of practice in order to get the patients here to preach to them—as worthy as that goal is (and that is my chief reason for being out here). But if we profess to be medical men and offer to heal people then I think we are morally obligated to do the job right.

The government is interested in having us build a specialists hospital — not a specialized hospital in that it would be limited, but a hospital staffed by specialists. I believe that with such a high type of hospital we can perform a real service and reach a group of African leaders what we would be unlikely to reach in the bush, to whom we could give the Gospel. If we're to try to reach the upper class African through medicine, we need to be in a center.

I'm not arguing for Jos as the only center. I think Kano or Zaria or Makurdi would be excellent places. But in Jos we have the distinct advantage of being near BMNH and the most remarkable advantage of having an excellent site on the edge of the city already granted.