Why not send a doctor?

Why not send a doctor? If the people of Masindi, Uganda need better health care, wouldn't it be the logical thing to send a misssionary doctor? Actually, for places like Masindi, sending a doctor may not be the best choice. The amount of expense and training for a doctor is, of course, much greater and so far I don't know of any doctor interested in moving to live in this place in rural Uganda--but there are other reasons also. Because of there extensive education and developed skills, doctors have to be concerned about constantly keeping their skills current, and keeping up with new procedures and medical developments as well as maintaining his/her certifications can be a challenge in remote areas. Also there can be a huge gap that is hard to cross in teaching those who have had little formal education. This can limit a doctor to focus on curative care instead of the far more cost-effective preventative education. A ministry that is locally reproducable, such as basic health teaching can have a far wider impact than curing one person at a time. A health educator can train a team of local people who can then train teams of more people and on further. A doctor may only be able to use a very small number of his or her skills with the limited infrastructure (e.g. electrical power) and limited available technology and would be hard pressed to train one person to replace him or her much less many to multiply the effect. Preventing disease is usually cheaper and clearly involves less suffering than waiting to cure problems. Proper handwashing, making sure water is safe to drink, preventing malarial mosquito bites and such can make a huge difference in many people's health. Ideally, as a health missionary I would like to work myself out of a job and no longer be needed. However, in a place like Uganda, I expect that to take longer than the three-year term with which I am starting.