CURE Ethiopia & Dr. Nunn Awarded Prestigious L’Chaim Prize
News | 24 Jul 2023
Tens of thousands of Ethiopia’s children are living with scoliosis—and many of them are extreme cases that, without surgical intervention, can be fatal. The country’s hospitals are not equipped to perform these complex surgeries, leaving these children vulnerable to a lifetime of pain, illness, and ridicule.
This is about to change.
As the recipient of the 2022 L’Chaim Prize for Outstanding Christian Medical Missionary Service, Medical Director and orthopedic surgeon Dr. Timothy Nunn, and the team at CURE Ethiopia, are now poised to launch the first pediatric spinal program in a country of 118 million people. That means more of Ethiopia’s children will receive the life-changing medical care they need.
The annual prize of $500,000 is funded by Mark and Erica Gerson and awarded by African Mission Healthcare, the non-profit they co-founded which strengthens mission hospitals in more than 10 African countries. The award is meant to be a strategic investment in transformational medical projects that change lives–and that’s what CURE is all about.
“This is the place where I have been led”
Dr. Tim completed his medical fellowships in Sheffield, UK, where he worked as a pediatric orthopedic consultant surgeon. He also practiced in South Africa and Kenya. While he could work almost anywhere in the world, his heart was drawn to serve with CURE after visits to CURE Malawi and CURE Ethiopia.
“Those were very inspirational visits,” Dr. Tim recalls. “It was clear that gospel proclamation in deed and word were important factors in CURE’s medical mission.”
Dr. Tim joined the hospital staff in 2014. He and his family now consider Ethiopia home.
“There is a unique history and culture,” he says. “This is the place where I have been led and this is the place where, working with national and international colleagues, we can serve children and their families in need. I am passionate about healing pediatric patients because their treatable disability robs them of an opportunity for a full and productive life.”
In 2022, Dr. Tim felt led to begin the first pediatric spine program at CURE Ethiopia to address a critical need facing children across Ethiopia. Starting a program this significant requires multiple partnerships. Strategic partners at the Tim Tebow Foundation have played a critical role in helping to launch the program. Dr. Rick Hodes, an American doctor who’s been treating patients in Ethiopia for 30+ years, also serves as a partner in the project with his organization, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
Ethiopia’s first comprehensive pediatric orthopedic spinal program
The L’Chaim prize will strengthen these partnerships and allow the 70-bed teaching hospital to provide the only surgical spine service for children in the country.
Perry Jansen, VP of Strategic Health Partnerships at African Mission Healthcare, explains that this is precisely why they selected Dr. Tim as the recipient of the L’Chaim Prize.
“We look to award the prize to projects that are very strategic and that we hope will catalyze other partners to come alongside and do something that has a big impact,” he says. “This project is about preventing people from a devastating diagnosis by doing early intervention . . . and by preventing people from becoming so debilitated.”
Perry has seen first-hand how devastating it is when a treatable disability becomes a lifelong or even deadly condition. He recounted meeting a 19-year-old woman with severe scoliosis at Dr. Hodes’ clinic at Ethiopia’s government hospital. She came looking for hope, but because her condition went untreated for so long, surgery was not an option. Instead of treatment, she received news that she had potentially less than 10 years to live.
Perry says, “To me, that reinforced Dr. Nunn and CURE Ethiopia’s strategy for starting with school screenings, casting, and rods that can grow as the kids grow to prevent complications.”
The L’Chaim Prize will help CURE Ethiopia:
- develop an early intervention program that screens school children for spinal conditions,
- sponsor an additional orthopedic surgeon to support complex spine surgeries,
- train healthcare workers in surgical and non-invasive spinal therapies, and
- bring access to life-changing healthcare to thousands of Ethiopian children suffering from spinal deformities living in poverty.
New life for more children with disabilities
For children with disabilities, receiving quality medical and spiritual care does more than just bring physical transformation. It transforms their lives and gives them hope for the future. This program will be life-changing for children like little Ketora.
She suffers from scoliosis, and her father moved the family to Addis Ababa so she could be treated at CURE. Using a non-invasive approach called Mehta casting, Dr. Tim and his team will re-apply a hard cast every six weeks to gradually straighten her spine over time. When she is seven years old, Dr. Tim expects that she will undergo surgery that will keep her spine straight as she grows.
While she stays at CURE Ethiopia, Ketora enjoys making new friends on the playground, and her worried father has received prayer and support from CURE’s spiritual ministry team.
Ketora’s father says, “I don’t know what I would have done if treatment had not been free.”
Dr. Tim knows all too well what can happen if Ketora doesn’t receive the medical care she needs. He says, “If left without treatment, Ketora’s scoliosis would become so severe that it would badly affect her breathing and possibly her heart. Once this occurs, the surgery to straighten the spine has a very high risk of severe complications such as death and paralysis. With early interventions such as casting, bracing, and surgical growing rods, we hope to help many like Ketora to avoid such a fate.”
L’Chaim is translated as “to life,” fitting as this award will help CURE Ethiopia reach even more children with the world-class medical care they need to live life to the full.
Dr. Tim expresses the gratitude of everyone at CURE as he says, “Thank you to African Mission Healthcare for helping to fill this immense need and to the supporters of CURE International for providing these life-changing medical services.”
Every gift made to CURE empowers world-class Christian surgeons to be the hands and feet of Christ. Generous supporters like you make it possible.
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