Hoping to Help: The Promises and Pitfalls of Global Health Volunteering
Judith N. Lasker, ILR Press, 272 pages, $19.95. Some do it to get into heaven, and some do it to get into medical school. Whatever the motivation, the number of health care volunteers has soared in recent years, with commentators straggling behind debating the merits of the stampede.
Tens of thousands of religious and secular institutions now send hundreds of thousands of health volunteers from the U.S. out into the world, generating close to an estimated $1 billion worth of unpaid labor. Volunteers include experienced medical professionals and individuals who can provide only elbow grease. Judith Lasker, a professor at Lehigh University, delivers a straightforward, data-driven look at whether volunteers help or hurt local health care facilities. It turns out these questions cannot be answered, at least not very precisely.
Sometimes language barriers or students take up host resources needed elsewhere. The short stays of many could be disruptive; one set of volunteers might not know what the previous group did, for example. Even well-organized programs may undermine hosting communities in unanticipated ways: For instance, a good volunteer-based clinic may sap confidence in local medical care and, providing free services, threaten to put local physicians out of business.
Lasker winds up cautiously endorsing short-term volunteer work, provided the volunteer chooses carefully among programs and behaves responsibly while at work.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
