Friends of Hope Africa University congratulates Dr. Jason Fader of Kibuye Hope Hospital in Burundi on being awarded the inaugural Gerson L’Chaim Prize of $500,000 by the African Mission Healthcare Foundation.
“Because of the L’Chaim Prize, hundreds of people will walk, thousands will receive care, and tens of thousands will be helped by the doctors we will train,” Fader said. “It’s hard to overstate the effect. In one of the world’s poorest countries, a prize of this magnitude, in one hospital, is far-reaching.”
Fader is the only surgeon training medical students and caring for patients at Kibuye Hope Hospital, which was established as a mission of the Free Methodist Church of Burundi in the 1940s. Only 13 surgeons serve 10 million people in Burundi, a country of 10 million people called the world’s hungriest nation by the World Bank. Fader is also a faculty member of Hope Africa University — an educational institution of higher learning established in 2000 by the Free Methodist Churches of Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. A Christianity Today headline recently described him as “The World’s Most Outstanding Medical Missionary.”
The award is the first-ever Gerson L’Chaim Prize by African Mission Healthcare Foundation for Outstanding Christian Medical Missionary Service. The foundation is founded by New York entrepreneur Mark Gerson and his friend, Dr. Jon Fielder, a medical missionary serving in Kenya.
“Missionary doctors are this era’s untold humanitarian story,” said Gerson, who underwrites the prize with his wife, Rabbi Erica Gerson. “Forsaking every comfort and convenience to bring skilled compassion to the continent’s poor, Dr. Fader and his team are links in a string of unsung heroes across Africa.”
The foundation carefully chose the four finalists for this award from a pool of 26 applications from long-term medical missionaries, Catholic and Protestant, in 12 countries. Candidate projects spanned women’s health centers, African doctor training, cancer diagnosis and treatment, pediatric surgery training and care, heart surgery, mobile HIV care, malaria prevention and emergency rooms.
The award reminds people of the many missionary doctors who — forsaking every comfort and convenience — bring skilled, compassionate care to the continent’s poor.
With the L’Chaim Prize, Fader and his colleagues will add critically needed hospital beds at rural Kibuye Hope Hospital, create Burundi’s first postgraduate medical training and expand lower-limb fracture care in a nation that travels by foot.
“To move forward, to provide higher volume and better quality care, and to train more national health-care workers, this hospital must expand,” said Fader, who plans to serve in Burundi “for many years to come.”
In Burundi, Fader and his on-the-ground team at Kibuye Hope Hospital have trained doctors, increased surgical procedures, and upgraded and expanded medical facilities. Since 2013, the team has served at Kibuye Hope, the teaching hospital for Hope Africa University Medical School.
Friends of Hope Africa University is a self-supported fundraising organization for Hope Africa University.
Visit fmchr.ch/fmwmfader to watch videos of Fader on the Free Methodist World Missions website. In one video, Fader and others talk of the improvements that will come to Kibuye Hope Hospital as a result of the award. Another video takes an in-depth look at Fader and Kibuye Hope Hospital.
Visit fmchr.ch/cbnfader to watch the Christian Broadcasting Network’s video and article reporting on the hospital, its medical team and the Gersons.
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