Carroll Behrhorst
1922 - 1990
He was a doctor who took the time to learn how people in "developing" nations could be helped "on their own terms," and to understand just how much they had to give in return.
His Health Promoter system shared medical knowledge with barely literate but highly intelligent native people of rural Guatemala who otherwise had no doctors.
He wasn't like Albert Schweitzer. Behrhorst once said that Schweitzer was of course a great man, but he was trying to empty the Atlantic ocean with a teacup. A systtem of medicine based on empowring people was far more effective.
He saw the health problems
of rural Guatemala in the context of poverty and social injustice and
he encouraged cooperatives and other development work as a necessary part
of his medical practice.
Although many health
promoters were killed in the 1980s, the work of
the Behrhorst Foundation goes on.
H
Photo © Bill Kovarik, photos@wdmm.net
Taken at the clinic in 1977.
One of the innovations of the Behrhorst clinic was that family members were encouraged to stay in the hospital with the patient to help care for them. They were also able to pay some or all of the nominal fee by working for others while they were there at the clinic. This arrangement was welcomed by the patients.
© Bill Kovarik, photos@wdmm.net
Taken at the clinic in 1977.
Carroll Behrhorst saw
the darkness descend on Guatemala. When this picture was taken in 1977
he had already been smuggled out of the country many times in order to
avoid death threats. Within a few years the complex and highly effective
Health Promoter system he built would be all but destroyed, even though
the clinic / hospital survived.
© Bill Kovarik, photos@wdmm.net
Taken at the clinic in 1977.