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Philanthropy
Upper West Side couple's prize funds modern-day Albert Schweitzers.
After a serious car accident a few months ago, a high school student in eastern Africa can walk because of a philanthropic Jewish couple from the Upper West Side.
Upendo, a 14-year-old girl in Tanzania, broke her femur late last year on the way to school. The injury was potentially crippling. With no advanced medical facilities in her homeland, she was taken across the border to Burundi, where surgeons at Kibuye Hospital treated her fracture by inserting a steel rod in her leg, the first step on her return to health.
The operation was made possible by a grant last year from entrepreneur Mark Gerson and his wife, Rabbi Erika Gerson, who established the Gerson L'Chaim Prize for Outstanding Christian Medical Missionary Service. The initial $500,000 annual award, for Christian medical missionaries working in Africa - modern Albert Schweitzers - went to Dr. Jason Fader, a missionary doctor who has served in rural Burundi for five years.
The prize, the first to aid Christian missionaries doing long-time service in Africa, paid for construction of a new surgical ward building at Kibuye Hope Hospital, where Fader works, renovation of the affiliated medical school's teaching laboratory, purchase of orthopedic implant supplies, the country's first medical internship,...