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Social Justice
There are many kinds of social justice, closely related and equally as important, and working for the health of poor children is one of them. Working for clean water is closely related to children’s health, and can transform the health of entire populations. Working for good schools is also important to children – obviously. Writing good laws and keeping the peace are essential to the well being of people – obviously. There are millions of us working in the trenches for social justice in our different ways, even if we think of ourselves as having much narrower professions. I happen to be a medical doctor, but my colleagues include nurses, teachers, sanitary engineers, social workers, honest policemen, and many others who just think of themselves as decent people doing their jobs.
Christian M. Hansen, MD,MPH,
Haiti in the New Century
The great question of this new century is whether the age of interdependence is going to be good or bad for humanity. The answer depends upon whether we in the wealthy nations spread the benefits and reduce the burdens of the modern world, on whether the poor nations enact the changes necessary to make progress possible, and on whether we all can develop a level of consciousness high enough to understand our obligations and responsibilities to each other. We are all going to have to change.
President Bill Clinton
Haiti’s Dilemma
In Haiti, the needs are so many and the poverty so overwhelming that most do-gooder outsiders like me tend to pick one small place (such as the RENMEN orphanage) to help, knowing full well that we cannot possibly do much for the country as a whole. If poverty is the social equivalent of many forces, then Haiti is like a malignant ecosystem that’s highly resistant to change. The country is plagued by so many mutually-reinforcing problems – from a huge foreign debt, to meddling by outside powers, to internal corruption to a landscape eroded by deforestation – that the government cannot perform all its duties. Foreign non governmental organizations have taken over much of the job of providing Haiti’s health care needs.
Haiti’s health statistics help illustrate what that overused word “poverty,” actually means to the people living there. The average Haitian life expectancy is about fifty years, compared to seventy-seven in the U.S. The Haitian infant mortality rate is seventy-five deaths per thousand live births, more than ten times higher than the infant mortality rate in the U.S. Only about half the Haitian households have access to wells or improved water sources and only about half the Haitian population can read and write. And yet – here is the grace – I saw children from homes without running water walking proudly to school, wearing immaculately clean, crisply ironed uniforms. I couldn’t figure out how the parents did it. Haiti’s that kind of place, tragic and exasperating, but deeply spiritual and full of surprises.
Excerpts from the book, In The Name Of The Children, by Chris Hansen MD.
Presentation for the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa. Haverford College 1994
Chris Hansen graduated from Haverford with the distinguished class of 1954, finished medical school at the University of Pennsylvania in 1958 and then a pediatric residency at Philadelphia’s Children’s Hospital. At that stage, he had still not moved twenty miles from his native Camden. Afterwards the whole world was his ward.
Commissioned in the united States Public Health Service, he worked with native Americans in Arizona, New Mexico, and South Dakota, with an intervening tour of duty as doctor for the Peace Corps volunteers in turkey and Cyprus. He was among a group of physicians that initiated the Mound Bayou Delta Health Center in Mississippi, bringing modern medical care to that forgotten rural community. During that tour he joined a Friends Service Committee Mission to Nigeria to investigate relief aid during the Biafra war. Pediatric consultation has taken him subsequently to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and most recently to Iraq and the successor states of the Soviet Union for project Hope.
He has become an insistent advocate for all those too young to speak for themselves in a world that ignores, deprives, and abuses them. His impatience with bureaucratic insensitivity, his witness against violence and warfare, his abundant love of all that is decent in humankind have made him a valued servant in the cause of peace and humanity.
Obituary Dr. Christian M. Hansen Jr 1933 – 2010
On this day reserved for celebrating the achievements of presidents, we pause to salute Dr. Christian M. Hansen Jr., a pediatrician whose contributions to public health have made differences in Trenton and as far away as Africa. The Camden native, who was a resident of New Hope, Pa., died Feb. 3, at age 77. “I have no other view than to promote the public good, and am unambitious of honors,” George Washington once said. Dr. Hansen was of a similar mind in his promotion of the public good as an advocate for the Division of Youth and Family Services and a seemingly endless number of short medical missions to global crisis spots, including Nigeria, Vietnam, Iraq, Armenia, Rwanda, Kosovo and Haiti. “He definitely cared so much about children, and he cared about people on a global scale and wanted to do as much as he could to help,” said his daughter, Amy Hansen. “He never thought he did enough. He definitely inspired a lot of people to think in a much bigger way about helping others and to have an open heart.”
Like Abraham Lincoln, who “never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day,” Dr. Hansen’s life was characterized by constant practice of doing the right thing. He helped establish the Henry J. Austin Health Center in 1969, spent Thanksgiving and Christmas mornings distributing turkey dinners to public housing residents, and volunteered, after his retirement, at the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen, as Staff Writer Meir Rinde recounted last week. He was a tutor there, but rolled up his sleeves to help in any and every way he could.
Prior to his work in Trenton, Dr. Hansen cared for children at the White Mountain Apache Reservation in Arizona, volunteered with the Peace Corps in Ankara, Turkey, then rejoined the health service, first in South Dakota and then in the Mississippi Delta. He helped open the Tufts Delta Health Center in 1965, working in the poor, predominantly black town of Mound Bayou during a period of tense race relations. He eventually joined the faculty of Rutgers Medical School, and later worked for the state, taking frequent breaks to travel to war zones around the world.
Dr. Hansen’s battles with injustice, malnutrition, abuse and neglect are recalled in his book “In the Name of the Children.” He describes working in some of the poorest countries of the world amid overwhelming challenges and comes to this conclusion: “If we were to take as literal truth the words of our founding fathers, that all men are created equal, we would start being very, very concerned about our effects on others, around the world and at home. And we’d be more concerned about the kids.”
Demonstrating concern for others seems like an excellent way of observing this Presidents Day and of celebrating Dr. Hansen’s life.
New Jersey Times Editorial: A champion for children, Monday, February 15, 2010