ICMDA & CMF
Imagine if there was a Christian witness through doctors and dentists in every community in every nation. This is the vision of the International Christian Medical and Dental Association (ICMDA), which aims to start and strengthen national associations of Christian doctors and dentists worldwide. ICMDA was founded in 1963 when six national associations, including Christian Medical Fellowship in the UK and Ireland (CMF UK), came together at a conference in Amsterdam. Since then, it has grown to 107 affiliated national associations worldwide involving some 60,000 health professionals and students, with contacts in another 50 countries.
ICMDA is organised in 14 world regions and has 12 paid staff and 70 volunteer fieldworkers. The latter are all Christian doctors and dentists who serve ICMDA part-time whilst raising their own support through professional work. ICMDA covers their expenses and travel.
The very heart of ICMDA’s ministry is training, mentoring, and developing Christian medical and dental leaders through weekly webinars, ten-week training courses, distance learning diplomas, and regional conferences. Our seventeenth World Congress in Arusha, Tanzania, in 2023 attracted over 1,000 attendees from 106 countries of whom 400 received bursaries to enable them to attend. The association is growing exponentially – twelve new movements joined at the 2018 World Congress in Hyderabad, India, and a further 23 joined at Arusha in 2023 – testimony to the Holy Spirit’s work.
From the beginning, ICMDA has enjoyed a close relationship with CMF UK and still does. CMF UK supports the work of ICMDA in a variety of ways:
- Leadership – ICMDA’s first two general secretaries were Douglas Johnson and Keith Sanders, who were at the same time general secretaries of CMF UK and the Secretariat operated out of the CMF office until 1992. That year, John and Thea Reader, also CMF members, were appointed as joint General Secretaries and took the international office first to Manchester and then Cambridge. They then passed the baton to Peter Pattisson, the fifth CMF member to hold the General Secretary position (1999-2002). 1 Since then, the office has moved around the world with each successive General Secretary (now CEO) with Ralph Sinn in Canada (2002-2004), Daryl Hackland in South Africa (2004-2010), Vinod Shah in India (2010-2019) and now back to Peter Saunders, former CMF CEO, in England (2019-present day).
- Literature – Many of ICMDA’s national member associations have little in the way of Christian medical publications. For over 30 years CMF has sent free bulk copies of Triple Helix and Nucleus (CMF’s student magazine) to over 40 countries around the world, where they are hungrily devoured. Books like Matters of Life and Death (John Wyatt), Cure for Life (Bernard Palmer) and The Doctor’s Life of Faith (Janet Goodall), have been translated into several different languages. The CMF files on ethical issues are also in high demand globally.
- Training – Since the early 1990s, CMF has hosted up to 20 overseas student leaders each year at its ‘Sydenham’ conference in London. Each February, attendees have been treated to a week of teaching, hospitality, and fellowship. They then join the CMF national student conference with up to 400 British and Irish students. Over the years, many of these visiting students have returned home with fresh vision and skills, helping them to start and strengthen CMFs in their home countries. CMF’s own Sydenham and Confident Christianity courses have been adapted for online small group training and benefited hundreds of doctors, dentists, and students from over 100 countries in eight different languages. John Greenall’s CMF course on ‘Developing Volunteers’ is currently being run in French in Sub-Saharan Africa. CMF members have served all over the world through the ministries of PRIME and the International Saline Partnership, both of which have worked closely with CMF for decades.
- Speakers – Members of CMF UK are in high demand at national CMF conferences in other countries and at the regional and world congresses that ICMDA runs alternately every four years. Since the start of the Covid pandemic, over 180 global ICMDA webinars have had over 200,000 views live or on YouTube. About a third of the speakers have been members of CMF UK.
- Financial Support – ICMDA’s income comes largely from subscriptions from national associations (which support the international office) and individual donations (which support the field work). About 20 per cent of the former and 50 per cent of the latter come from CMF UK members. This income is essential for continuing our work, as the vast majority of ICMDA member associations are small, with just a few hundred or even a few dozen members and most of them are based in resource-poor areas.
- Mission support – Almost all the countries where CMF members serve abroad, either short or long term, have national CMFs affiliated to ICMDA, and these CMF expats are often involved as local members and in teaching and training.
- Governance – ICMDA is governed by a global board which has always had a representative from CMF UK. Past chairs have included Alan Johnson and Kevin Vaughan. Current CMF CEO Mark Pickering served as student representative from 1998-2003 and Peter Saunders served on the ICMDA board for 16 years between 2002 and 2018 before he became CEO. Howard Lyons (on the CMF UK Board) is currently treasurer.
- Field staff – Two of ICMDA’s current fieldworkers – Noel Aruparayil and Nurgul Mamyrova – are CMF members based in the UK, although both trained in the former Soviet Union and are fluent in Russian. James Tomlinson (CMF Head of Volunteers and Networks) and Peter Pattisson have both served as ICMDA Eurasia regional secretary and Ruth Pavlovic served as a fieldworker in the MENA region (Middle East North Africa). 2 The new European Regional Secretary is Triple Helix’s editor, David Smithard.
- Relief Work – When ICMDA launched its project to support the Chistian Medical Association of Ukraine (CMAU), CMF members were at the forefront both in giving and in serving through gathering medical supplies and preparing emergency backpacks. Much of the early work was coordinated by Vicky Lavy. Now 140 lorry loads later, we know that this project would never have got off the ground without the support of CMF. 3
It is right that CMF, as the third largest and strongest national association in the world (only CMDA US and CMAI India are larger), should share its experience, expertise and resources with Christian colleagues in other countries. But the spiritual blessings that have accrued to CMF itself are immeasurable, through the privilege of being able to participate in God’s great work to bring glory to the Lord Jesus Christ ‘who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good’. (Titus 2:14)
