We do not question Mother Teresa’s sincerity or the genuineness of the great personal sacrifices she made. Yet there are troubling facts involving even the medical/practical side of her ministry. Numerous former workers in her clinics and visiting medical doctors report that patients were not given proper medication and that the beds and furnishings and general conditions were unsuitable for a hospital or clinic. The reports, coming as they do from a variety of independent observers for a hospital or clinic. The reports, coming as they do from a variety of independent observers, seem beyond dispute. As one example, Mary Loudon, a volunteer in Calcutta, wrote concerning Mother Teresa’s Home for the Dying:
“My initial impression was of all the photographs and footage I’ve ever seen of Belsen [Nazi death camp] and places like that, because all the patients had shaved heads. No chairs anywhere, there were just these stretcher beds. They’re like First World War stretcher beds. There’s no garden…nothing. And I thought what is this? This is two rooms with fifty to sixty men in one, fifty to sixty women in another. They’re dying. They’re not being given a great deal of medical care. They’re not being given painkillers really beyond aspirin…for the sort of pain that goes with terminal cancer….”