Source: Joel News International, February 6, 2017
A missionary surgeon to Burundi has won the first-ever $500,000 Gerson L’Chaim prize for outstanding Christian medical service. Jason Fader, whose parents were also medical missionaries, is one of 13 surgeons serving the 10 million people in the sub-Saharan African country. Three-quarters of the population are malnourished, making Burundi the hungriest country in the world.
Fader, who grew up in Kenya, has been in Burundi since 2013. In addition to caring for about 25,000 patients a year with his team, he trains local doctors. “Jason is doing surgeries that no one else has done before in Burundi,” fellow doctor Rachel McLaughlin said. “He’s teaching medical students surgical skills and management.”
The prize money will be used to create the country’s first postgraduate medical training, add 48 new beds to the 172 at Kibuye Hope Hospital, and improve lower-limb fracture care—a crucial need in a country that travels by foot. “Literally hundreds of people will walk because of this prize,” Fader said. “Thousands of people will be cared for. And tens of thousands will be helped by the doctors we train here.”
Fader is part of a recent resurgence of medical missionaries. Attendance at the Global Missions Health Conference has ballooned more than tenfold over the past 10 years. Attendance at the Christian Community Health Fellowship conference has quadrupled. And the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board reported an all-time high of 300 medical missionaries on the field in 2013.
The African Mission Healthcare Foundation (AMHF), co-founder of the Gerson Prize, was created in 2010 to promote health care in Africa, where Christian mission hospitals provide about a third of all medical work.
» Read full story from Joel News, or watch a short video from AMHF.
» We also read that Kenya’s health system is on the verge of collapse as a doctors’ strike grinds on (The Guardian).