Controversy
The quality of care offered to terminally ill patients in the Homes for the Dying has been criticised as a poor establishment in the medical press, notably The Lancet and the British Medical Journal (BMJ). They reported the re-use of hypodermic needles, poor living conditions, cold baths for all patients, and an approach to illness and suffering that ignores such elements of modern medical care as systematic diagnosis. Dr. Robin Fox, editor of The Lancet, described the medical care as "haphazard", as volunteers without medical knowledge made decisions about patient care because of the lack of doctors. He observed that the Congregation did not seem to distinguish between curable and incurable patients, so that people who could otherwise survive would be at risk of dying from infections and lack of treatment. The spending of the donations has also been criticised. The author and journalist Christopher Hitchens and the German magazine Stern have alleged that Mother Teresa did not focus the money on alleviating poverty or improving the conditions of her hospices, but on opening new convents and increasing missionary work.
Read more about this topic: Missionaries Of Charity
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