L’Chaim (“To Life”) Prize<\/a> to be presented for Outstanding Christian Medical Missionary Service – the largest ever such award for clinical patient care. The concept of the prize stems from a special friendship between the Gersons and Dr. Jon Fielder, a Christian missionary living in Kenya.<\/p>\nMark and Jon met in college where their friendship grew out of common <\/span><\/span>love of history and ideas and, later, a shared concern for impoverished people in Africa. As Jon helped build HIV programs there, Gerson supplied, in Fielder\u2019s words, \u201cintellectual firepower and humbling generosity.\u201d By 2010 they founded the African Mission Healthcare Foundation (AMHF) to support Africa\u2019s faith-based healthcare workers which provides an astounding one-third of Africa\u2019s medical care. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nExplaining why a practicing Jewish couple would advance essential healthcare led by Christians, Mark says “In nearly a decade I\u2019ve seen limited resources in this community yield extraordinary return in lives saved and suffering relieved…The Jewish and Christian faiths share sanctity of life as the highest value.\u00a0 My wife and I are gratified to honor the physicians most effectively employing resources to heal the world\u2019s poorest and most vulnerable.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nThe inaugural 2016 Gerson L’Chaim Prize has drawn several applications from long-term medical missionaries, Catholic and Protestant, in 12 countries. Projects submitted cover women\u2019s health centers, African doctor training, cancer diagnosis and treatment, pediatric surgery training and care, heart surgery, mobile HIV care, malaria prevention, and ER centers. The selection committee combines current and former medical missionaries, African healthcare experts, and on-the-ground clinicians. <\/span>The four finalists for the 2016 inaugural Gerson L’Chaim Prize will be announced in October. The prize itself will be awarded in November 2016.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI recently had the opportunity to ask Mark and Jon about their friendship and their shared passion.<\/p>\n
JWK:\u00a0 How did this prize come about?<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
DR. JON FIELDER:<\/strong> African Mission Healthcare Foundation (AMHF) has been supporting medical missionaries and mission hospitals since 2010.\u00a0 Last year, Nicholas Kristof of\u00a0The New York Times<\/i>\u00a0highlighted the work of one of our partners, Dr. Tom Catena of the Nuba Mountains.\u00a0 Rabbi Erica and Mark Gerson, chairman and co-founder of AMHF, offered a matching challenge grant which was also featured by Kristof in the\u00a0Times<\/i>\u2014the first target was $100,000, and the Gersons repeatedly raised the goal to $175,000 due to the overwhelming interest.\u00a0 Following this generous response, Mark and Erica proposed the L\u2019Chaim (\u201cTo Life\u201d) Prize for Outstanding Christian Medical Missionary Service to attract attention and support for the other \u201cDoctor Catenas\u201d doing life-saving medical work amidst challenging conditions in Africa.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
MARK GERSON: <\/strong><\/strong>Aristotle wrote of three kinds of friendship — the friendship of pleasure, the friendship of use and the friendship of the good.\u00a0 Jon has, for 25 years, been for me the quintessential manifestation of the friendship of the good.\u00a0 From when we met when we were 18 years old, he exemplified moral seriousness — in a commitment to deeply understand and fully devote himself to the principles and practices that would best enable service to the poor and the dispossessed.\u00a0 This was inspiring to me, and to all others who came to know him well.\u00a0 We have always been in close and constant contact, and he taught me — through learning about his work and the work of his colleagues — about the extraordinary amount of good that Christian medical missionaries in Africa do, and the lack of institutional and financial support they have in any relation to the benefits they bring to the poorest people in the world.\u00a0 He is the best kind of friend, and it has been an honor and a privilege to extend that friendship into a partnership in service of the Christian medical missionaries in Africa who do so much for the poor, under such difficult conditions that require unimaginable sacrifice.\u00a0 The Torah commands us (36 times!) to devote ourselves to the stranger and Jon and his colleagues in the Christian medical missionary world have provided us and others involved with the African Mission Healthcare Foundation with the opportunity to do this so effectively.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
We live in a great age, perhaps the Golden Era, of Jewish-Christian fellowship, partnership and affection.\u00a0 May it last forever!\u00a0 This friendship — often rooted in the Christian interpretation of and emphasis on Genesis 12:3, and reflected in their love of Torah and of the state of Israel — has been an institutional and religious inspiration just as Jon has been a personal and religious inspiration.\u00a0 These Christian medical missionaries — through their service to the poor — live and serve at the right hand of God, and we (as Jews, and the same would apply to people of all faiths) are so fortunate to be able to partner with them in their sacred work.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
JWK:\u00a0 Why the particular focus on Christian missionary service?<\/strong><\/div>\nJF:<\/strong>I have been a medical missionary serving in Kenya and Malawi since 2002.\u00a0 Medical missionaries provide much of the quality day-to-day, on-the-ground clinical care and medical education, especially in rural settings.\u00a0 Mission clinics provide about a third of health care in sub-Saharan Africa.\u00a0 Unfortunately, over time, support for and interest in the work of medical missionaries has declined, even in churches.\u00a0 Yet the health problems are not going away.\u00a0 AMHF is trying to close this resource gap so that these qualified and committed servants can assist as many people as possible.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
JWK: <\/strong>Can you talk about your friendship and the values that unite Christians and, Jews as \u00a0well as, really, all people of goodwill?<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\nMG:<\/strong> What drew me to Jon’s work?\u00a0 The Torah instructs us (36 times!) to be devoted to the stranger.\u00a0 Jon and the work of Christian medical missionaries have given us the opportunity to do so with extraordinary effectiveness — as measured by the ROI of a dollar contributed to the Christian mission sector.\u00a0 There are so many examples of this.\u00a0 A few are as follows.\u00a0 And it is important to emphasize that the stunning paucity of doctors (and what they need) in Africa means that without this kind of support the patients in the vicinity would not receive the treatment they need.\u00a0 There is no one and nowhere else to go to.<\/div>\nJWK: Specifically, where does the money go?<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
MG:<\/strong> We support a clinic in Malawi that treats malaria for $8 (a) case.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
We support a clinic in Malawi that treats HIV patients for $75 (a) year — with so many examples of this enabling mothers to survive and, given today’s medicines, thrive to be able to raise their children.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
We support a clinic in Tanzania that for under a thousand dollars enables severely deformed legs and feet, often caused by the fluorine in the water along the Rift Valley, to be treated.\u00a0 Many of these children have, before the surgery, never walked a step in comfort.\u00a0 This means that we can enable them to walk normally and comfortably for less than $20 (a) year of doing so.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\u00a0We support a program in Uganda that for $3k each, trains nurses — each of whom will see 80,000+ patients throughout her career.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I just got back from Tanzania.\u00a0 I saw a patient being treated with an X-Ray machine that looked like it was from my childhood.\u00a0 That was right: it has been there since 1984, and the film was being dried outside.\u00a0 A modern X-Ray machine costs $65,000.\u00a0 We know how long it can last — and at a price of well under $3 (per) X-Ray.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
We support a clinic in South Sudan — there are 72,000 patient visits (infections, leprosy, TB, malnutrition, maternity, other) — for $6 (per) visit.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/span>JWK: How are we doing in the fight against AIDS in Kenya and other parts of Africa?<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
JF: <\/strong>African countries have made tremendous strides against HIV and AIDS, in large part because of the America\u2019s PEPFAR program (President\u2019s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief).\u00a0 Twelve million people in sub-Saharan Africa are on life-saving HIV medications.\u00a0 Controlling the virus in the body means people are less infectious, which in turns means fewer new infections.\u00a0 The prevalence rates amongst those aged 15 to 49 years peaked at 5.8% in 2000 and has since dropped to 4.5%; however, in some countries of east and Southern Africa the rates are still very high, ranging between 10% to 25%.\u00a0 Thanks to effective interventions, mother-to-child transmission of the virus has reduced dramatically, meaning fewer pediatric infections.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0
Despite this progress, Africa\u2014particularly East an Southern Africa\u2014still bear a very heavy burden of the virus.\u00a0 South Africa, with nearly six million infections, has the largest epidemic in the world.\u00a0 Kenya has the fourth largest.\u00a0 Today, of every 30 people who die in the world, one will be a Kenyan and one will be a Malawian, despite the fact that these countries only have a tiny fraction of the world population.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/u>\u00a0<\/u><\/div>\nAs with other areas of health care, mission hospitals have been leading HIV treatment and training centers.\u00a0 AMHF sponsors Kenya\u2019s largest hands-on clinical training program in Kenya at three mission hospitals.\u00a0 We also support one of the largest HIV clinics in Malawi.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
JWK: How can people go about nominating a group or organization involved in outstanding missionary work?<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\nJF:<\/strong> Applications for 2015 are closed.\u00a0 We plan to call for applications again during the Spring of 2017.\u00a0 Any long-term medical missionary involved in delivering day-to-day clinical care in Africa may apply.\u00a0 The applicant describes his or her work and proposed uses of the funds.\u00a0 After a committee selects the winner from a group of four finalists, the resources are awarded in his or her honor to the missionary\u2019s African host institution to accomplish the proposed projects.<\/span><\/div>\nJWK: What are your hopes for what the $500,000 can help achieve?
\n<\/strong><\/p>\nMG:\u00a0<\/strong>We know that the $500,000 will fund work like that (I’ve) described — with an enormous number of lives being saved and pain ameliorated by a Christian medical missionary selected by such a distinguished panel for his\/her capability to deploy it with maximum effectiveness.\u00a0 And we hope that the Prize will galvanize attention around the genuinely awesome work that Christian medical missionaries in general and the winner in particular do — as literally every dollar will significantly help provide needed healthcare to someone who otherwise would not receive it. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nEncourage one another and build each other up \u2013 <\/em>1 Thessalonians 5:11<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s today\u2019s dispatch from the crossroads of faith, media and culture. Beyond religion to faithful action. Philanthropist Mark Gerson and his wife Rabbi Erica Gerson have announced the establishment of an annual $500,000 L’Chaim (“To Life”) Prize to be presented for Outstanding Christian Medical Missionary Service – the largest ever such award for clinical patient…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":225,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9,10,1591,21],"tags":[9088,9089,9086,9092,9087,9091,9090],"class_list":["post-7164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic-church","category-christianity","category-current-events","category-good-works","category-judaism","tag-9088","tag-000-lchaim-to-life-prize","tag-2016-gerson-lchaim-prize","tag-african-mission-healthcare-foundation-amhf","tag-dr-jon-fielder","tag-philanthropist-mark-gerson","tag-rabbi-erica-gerson"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/strong><\/p>\n