Medical Missionary Couples

Walt and Eileen Petersen work with 14 mission presidents and their wives as well as the 2400 missionaries serving in the South America area covered by these missions as medical missionaries. Whenever there is a health problem the mission president or their missionaries contact the couple who reside in Buenos Aires for advice.

Sister Peterson offers a few good health tips to combat diarrhea:

But first...time out to talk with a sick missionary. "Oh, you have diarrhea?" Dr. Petersen confirms, and he could add, but doesn't, "So do many, many of the other 2,300 missionaries in this South America South Area." We are surprised that there is more incidence of diarrhea here than in the Central America Area--which is supposed to be more third world countries than here. Well, I guess the proper terminology now is "developing countries" instead of "third world countries."
It comes down to 3 main things:
1)Drink only purified bottled water.
2) Do not eat contaminated food.
3)Proper hygiene, mainly washing hands 30 seconds--often--to remove the germs. "Anti-bacterial" soap is a misnomer...it does not kill germs, nothing kills germs on the hands, the germs have to be removed by 30 seconds of vigorous washing...it's the friction that removes them. Even if you don't have soap or water, rubbing your hands on your clothes--for 30 seconds--will remove the germs. The soap and water does get the dirt off.

It will be interesting to tract their mission to see what things medical missionaries do on a daily basis.