麻豆约拍

Monday March 16th<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

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Good morning. Clean and safe hospitals caring well for our loved ones and providing good working environments for staff are something we take almost for granted. Any complaints we might have about conditions these days are a far cry from what hospital care was like before cleanliness was properly understood. Over 100 years ago, a surgeon, Joseph Lister was responsible for introducing new standards of cleanliness into surgical practice transforming patient care for ever. Today is the anniversary of the first publication of an article by Lister in 1867 in which he outlined the importance of antiseptic surgery.

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Lister鈥檚 proposals would certainly not meet today鈥檚 standards but his life and discoveries remind us of how far we have come in understanding the importance of clean surroundings and good patient care. I regularly visit in hospitals and am conscious of the hand wash provided for everyone who comes and goes. Infection is so easily transferred because we are never people who live in isolation from others. We human beings are linked to each other in all sorts of way.

The Bible and other books of faith often urge us to please God by the things that we do. Pleasing God will always mean considering the influence our life has on others for good or for bad. Lister鈥檚 discoveries began a process that 听would lift the burden of surgery gone wrong due to infection. We interdependent human beings are encouraged to carry one another鈥檚 burdens in order to fulfill Christ鈥檚 way.

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So today we pray for one another, for those who are burdened, for those with the power to lift and relieve burdens on others and for an increased sense of interdependence. Amen