2018 Gerson L'Chaim Prize





Dr. Rick Sacra



2018 Laureate and Ebola survivor Dr. Rick Sacra of Liberia is training doctors and strengthening ELWA mission hospital.


GIVE
Watch the interview

EBOLA SURVIVOR AND MEDICAL MISSIONARY TO LIBERIA WINS 3RD ANNUAL $500,000 GERSON L"CHAIM PRIZE FOR OUTSTANDING CHRISTIAN MEDICAL MISSIONARY SERVICE



Dr. Rick Sacra voluntarily returned to Liberia in midst of deadly epidemic



The 2018 Gerson L’Chaim Prize Laureate, awarded by African Mission Healthcare, is Dr. Rick Sacra, a long-term medical missionary and family physician serving in Liberia, West Africa.

In 2014, at the height of the Ebola epidemic ravaging West Africa and spreading fear around the world, Dr. Rick Sacra, serving with the mission SIM, voluntarily returned from furlough in Massachusetts to assist his colleagues at ELWA Hospital in the capital city of Monrovia, Liberia. As his colleagues cared for victims in the Ebola Treatment Unit, Dr. Sacra ran the rest of the hospital. While delivering a baby to a sick mother with a high fever, Dr. Sacra contracted Ebola. Evacuated to a special facility in Nebraska, he survived only to return to Liberia to help the country rebuild.

Dr. Sacra has served in Liberia for over 20 years. When the civil war drove many Liberian refugees into neighboring Ivory Coast, Dr. Sacra, his wife Debbie, and their children moved to a remote region to serve the refugees. The Sacras then moved back to Liberia when the war ended. Dr. Sacra and ELWA hospital will use the Prize to:

• Train Liberian family medicine residents. Liberia has only one doctor for every 15,000 people, and most of those lack advanced training.

• Install solar power capacity. The nation’s grid power is not reliable, causing the hospital to use precious resources on fuel for the back-up generator.

• Establish intensive care units with trained staff. At present, there is no reliable place to send a patient who needs more advanced care in Liberia, such as expectant mothers with very high blood pressure, trauma patients, or sick newborns.

Dr. Sacra is also the beneficiary of a matching challenge grant collaboration between African Mission Healthcare and Christian Broadcasting Network, which is providing $2 million at eight mission teaching hospitals in Africa to expand care, training, and infrastructure. At ELWA, AMH-CBN funds will also support the family medicine training program and will provide medicines to patients suffering from HIV/AIDS.

African Mission Healthcare (AMH) is a US 501(c)3 non-profit organization which strengthens mission hospitals to aid those in greatest need. Since 2010, AMH has distributed $20 million in assistance to 40 facilities in 16 countries. This support has made possible over 550,000 patient visits, 11,500 surgeries, 115 healthcare scholarships, and training of 2,600 HIV care providers.

The Rabbi Erica and Mark Gerson L’Chaim (“To Life”) Prize for Outstanding Christian Medical Mission Service is the world’s largest annual award dedicated to direct patient care. The product of the generosity of philanthropists Mark and Erica Gerson of New York City, the L’Chaim Prize is an annual $500,000 award selected by a panel of leaders in African medicine.

The L’Chaim Prize award dinner will be held Thursday, January 31st, 2019 in New York. For more information, visit amhf.us/lchaim or write info@amhf.us.




"God led me to become a medical missionary many years ago. The passion that motivated me then is still the one that motivates me now: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” To see people’s lives enriched through better health and the experience of God’s love is still what drives me."

Dr Rick Sacra, Time Magazine



2017 Gerson L'Chaim Prize





2017 l'chaim laureate DR RUSS WHITE OF TENWEK HOSPITAL is training heart surgeons like dr agneta odera


DONATE
Read New York Times article
Watch

1 in 500 Kenyans have heart valve damage





And most are kids. 1 in every 175 kids in Africa has rheumatic heart disease. In the region around Tenwek Hospital, home of Dr. White, the 2017 L'Chaiim Prize Laureate, 6% of school children are affected. Elsewhere in Africa the numbers are also very high, with limited access to care. This condition results from untreated strep throat, which sets off an immunological chain reaction resulting in the scarring of the doors in the heart.



WITHOUT SURGERY 70% will die before age 25





Rheumatic heart disease is a treatable problem but many cases require surgery. Access to specialized care is very limited in Africa. Dr. White's plan is to train some of the first African heart surgeons to address this dire need. Already at Tenwek Hospital there is a waiting list of 450 patients--and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Surgeons and special nurses are also needed for other heart and chest diseases.





What the 2017 L'Chaim Prize Will Do





EQUIPMENT



For the ICU, including ventilators, heart monitors, ultrasound machines, and blood gas analyzers.



STIPENDS & HOUSING



The first trainee will begin in January 2018. Ultimately, the three-year fellowship will have two trainees per year, each of whom requires a salary and housing.



COMMUNITY SCREENING



The hospital's community team will screen local school children to identify those who already have heart damage. Those will either be referred for surgery or placed on preventative antibiotics.



2016 Laureate





Dr Jason Fader of Burundi



Lone surgeon for millions uses Prize to build surgical ward, renovate laboratory, repair broken legs, and train African doctors.



LONE SURGEON SERVING MILLIONS WINS INAUGURAL $500,000 GERSON L'CHAIM PRIZE



Dr. Jason Fader of Burundi: Only Full-Time Surgeon Outside Capital City, in Nation of 10 Million People



December 2016

Dr. Jason Fader--a son of medical missionaries, and on a team of American physicians in Burundi, the world's hungriest nation--will bolster his work with $500,000 from the first-ever Gerson L'Chaim Prize for Outstanding Christian Medical Missionary Service.

"Because of this prize, hundreds of people will walk, thousands will receive care, and tens of thousands will be helped by the doctors we will train," Dr. Fader said.

The L'Chaim Prize, the largest ever in clinical care, is from the African Mission Healthcare Foundation (AMHF)-founded by New York entrepreneur Mark Gerson and his friend, Dr. Jon Fielder, a medical missionary serving in Kenya.

"Missionary doctors are the untold humanitarian story of our era," said Gerson, who underwrites the prize with his wife, Rabbi Erica Gerson. "Forsaking every comfort and convenience, they bring skilled, compassionate care to the continent's poor. Across Africa, Dr. Fader and his team are a link in a string of unsung heroes."

With the L'Chaim prize, Fader and his colleagues--serving with the agency SERGE--will:
■ add critically needed hospital beds at rural Kibuye Hope Hospital
■ create Burundi's first postgraduate medical training
■ expand lower-limb fracture care in a nation that travels by foot

"It's hard to overstate the effect," Fader said. "In one of the world's poorest countries, a prize of this magnitude, in one hospital, is far reaching."

In Burundi--called the world's hungriest nation by the World Bank--only 13 surgeons serve 10 million people. Fader and his on-the-ground team, however, have trained doctors, increased surgical procedures, and upgraded and expanded medical facilities. Every team member raises his or her financial support and has learned both French and Kirundi. Since 2013, the team has served at the Kibuye Hope Hospital, the teaching hospital for Hope Africa University Medical School.

"To move forward, to provide higher volume and better quality care, and to train more national healthcare workers, we have to expand the hospital," said Fader, who intends to serve in Burundi "for many years to come."

Across Africa, medical help is the most endangered species. Since missions and agencies peaked in the last century, the docs still on the job, and their African colleagues, operate on shrinking support despite a rising tide of complex medical challenges-from AIDS to surgical problems to cancer. Fielder and Gerson, with friends and supporters, formed AMHF to bolster Africa's medical heroes and their institutions.




Dr. Rick Hodes, Medical Director, JDC Ethiopia



L'Chaim Prize Committee Member





Rick Hodes studied at Middlebury College and University of Rochester School of Medicine before training in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins. He has spent over 20 years in Ethiopia as medical director for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. He serves as a consultant to a Catholic mission and his practice focuses on spinal deformities, cardiac disease, and cancer patients.



Dr. Tina Slusher, Professor, University of Minnesota



L'Chaim Prize Committee Member





Tina Slusher is Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Minnesota in the Department of Pediatrics, Division of Global Health. She has worked periodically in Nigeria as a medical missionary for 27 years and has expanded her teaching and/or research to include many other countries in Africa and Asia.



Dr. Tom Catena, Mother of Mercy Hospital, Nuba Mountains



L'Chaim Prize Committee Member





Tom Catena graduated from Brown University and Duke University School of Medicine. He trained in family medicine and served in the Navy. His worked at St. Mary's Hospital, Nairobi for more than a dozen years. In 2008 he helped begin Mother of Mercy Hospital in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan. In 2015 Dr. Catena was an Aurora Prize Finalist.



Dr. Phil Fischer, Professor, Mayo Clinic



L'Chaim Prize Committee Member





Phil Fischer is a professor of pediatrics at the Mayo Clinic. He trained in medicine at the University of California, Irvine, in pediatrics at the University of Utah, and in tropical medicine at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Dr. Fischer practiced and taught pediatrics in central Africa from 1985 through 1991. Since then, he has taught and researched child health from an academic American base.



Dr. Peter Okaalet, Okaalet & Associates



L'Chaim Prize Committee Member





Peter Okaalet started his career as a medical officer in Uganda. He later held positions with The AIDS Support Organization (Uganda) and the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology. He has served as senior director for health policy for MAP International. In 2005 Dr. Okaalet was named as one of TIME Magazine’s Global Health Heroes.



Dr. Richard Goodgame, Professor, Univ. of Texas



L'Chaim Prize Committee Member





Rick Goodgame received his MD and internal medicine training at Johns Hopkins and completed a chief residency at Massachusetts General Hospital. He served for 10 years as a medical missionary, teaching medical students at Makerere University in Uganda. Dr. Goodgame is Professor of Medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology, University of Texas Medical Branch,



Jonathan Mwiindi, Vice-President, AMHF



L'Chaim Prize Committee Member





Jonathan Mwiindi studied pharmacy in Nairobi before leading Kijabe Hospital's HIV program and organizing the University of Maryland School of Medicine office in Kenya. He holds a bachelor's from the University of South Africa, a master's in healthcare management from Seton Hall, and is pursuing a Ph.D. in Public Health at the University of Texas. Mr. Mwiindi coordinated the global health program at the University of Texas Medical Branch.



Dr. Jill Seaman, South Sudan Medical Relief



L'Chaim Prize Committee Member





Jill Seaman studied at the University of Washington School of Medicine and London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. She has been working in Ethiopia and (South) Sudan since 1989, where she conducted research into the treatment of visceral leishmaniasis, for which she won a Macarthur Fellowship. Dr. Seaman founded and directs South Sudan Medical Relief.



Dr. Nathaniel Smith, Director, Arkansas Dept. of Health



L'Chaim Prize Committee Member





Nate Smith trained in internal medicine and infectious diseases at Baylor College of Medicine. He and his wife served as medical missionaries at Kijabe Hospital in Kenya for six years, where Nate was a pioneer in the treatment of HIV disease. He served as Senior Advisor for the University of Maryland's AIDS treatment programs in East Africa. Dr. Smith is an ordained minister in the Anglican Church.



Dr. Jon Fielder, President, AMHF



L'Chaim Prize Committee Member





Jon Fielder is a graduate of Williams College and trained in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He has spent a dozen years as a medical missionary in Kenya and Malawi. Dr. Fielder and Mark Gerson co-founded AMHF in 2010 to provide support for mission hospitals.



STORIES FROM THE FIELD



Get our newsletter.



We do not sell your information, and we hate spam, too!








SIGN UP >

follow #lChaimprize





get updates on the finalists and winners.




SUBMIT >

AMH is a registered 501(c)3 public charity (EIN 27-3663856). All gifts are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.





Donations and inquiries:
(note new address)



African Mission Healthcare
PO Box 8598, Pueblo, CO 81008-8598
info@africanmissionhealthcare.org
614-259-7229