Extreme Medicine: Practicing in Africa for 28 years

Dr. Rick Hodes went to Ethiopia to help victims of the famine in the mid-1980s, planning to stay for only a year. He never left. He recognized that he was uniquely positioned to help desperately poor people who had no other hope for treatment. He is now the Medical Director of Ethiopia for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), a 95-year old NGO, and is the senior consultant at a Catholic mission helping those sick with heart disease, spinal disease, and cancer, many of whom need life-saving surgeries. Dr. Hodes is the subject of the HBO documentary film “Making the Crooked Straight.”