History
Dr. Jon Fielder began service at Kijabe Hospital in central Kenya in 2002, inheriting a nascent HIV treatment program from medical missionary Dr. Nate Smith. With the assistance of generous individuals, corporations, and churches, access to antiretroviral therapy was gradually extended to needy individuals through a cost-sharing program. This experience with HIV care delivery positioned Kijabe Hospital to receive assistance from the AIDSRelief consortium, a group of organizations led by Catholic Relief Services and funded by the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDSRelief (PEPFAR). Since 2004, the number of individuals who have received specialized HIV care through Kijabe Hospital has grown from 125 to over 6000. The institution also became a training center and along with nearby Nazareth Hospital has mentored over 1000 clinicians, pharmacists, laboratory technicians and community health workers from Kenya and other parts of Africa.
The growth in the HIV treatment program prompted the need for more space, particularly facilities closer to where patients actually live. After Dr. Fielder raised the necessary funds, large satellite clinics were opened. This process included the acquisition of land, installation of infrastructure (security, water, sewage, and electricity), and the construction or renovation of clinical buildings. The interest in and the needs of the HIV program were leveraged to provide infrastructure for the provision of additional services, including general medical and antenatal care.
For approximately $900,000—equivalent to the one-year costs associated with two liver transplants in the US--the physical infrastructure has been erected which will accommodate nearly a half million patient visits over the ensuing decade.
Most of this work was funded through the Fielder Medical Assistance Foundation, a ministry charity project of Waterstone Foundation. Since 2003, approximately $1.3 million has been directed toward healthcare projects in Africa. Heritage Christian Church of Westerville, Ohio also generously funded projects at Kijabe Hospital.
In 2008 Dr. Fielder and his family moved to Lilongwe, Malawi to serve at the Partners in Hope Medical Center, a Christian non-profit located in the capital city of Lilongwe. Founded in 2005 by medical missionary Dr. Perry Jansen, Partners in Hope has enrolled over 5,000 HIV-infected patients into care since 2005. It also serves a training and referral center.
During his time in Africa Dr. Fielder has had the opportunity to visit many church health facilities and to interact with numerous medical missionaries and Catholic nuns in charge of life-saving programs. These medical missionaries (from numerous Christian denominations) are often responsible for providing quality medical care (from HIV to surgery to infectious diseases to orthopedic surgeries -- everything) for large population centers in Africa.
However, consistent and adequate funding of their efforts is usually lacking -- their status as Christian missionaries shuts off some avenues of funding while the diminution in commitment of the denominations that supported their predecessors presents another challenge. The fact that they often spend their entire careers serving the poor of Africa means that they cannot develop relationships with Western philanthropists. Consequently, these missionaries will often "fundraise" by spending six months every few years going from church to church trying to raise a few hundred or a couple of thousand dollars on a Sunday, mostly to allow them to return to Africa. While the missionaries deeply appreciate the generosity and prayers of these churchgoers, the funding is not sufficient to meet the medical needs -- and African mothers go without HIV care and C-sections, children go without orthopedic surgery to fix deformed limbs, and victims of easily treated infectious diseases remain sick or even die when relatively small amounts of money in the hands of the missionaries could lead to life-saving treatment.
In 2010, Jon Fielder, Mark Gerson (a New Jersey-based entrepreneur who, along with his family, friends and colleagues at and clients of the Gerson Lehrman Group have funded much of Dr. Fielder's work) and Sean Fieler (a New York-based investor who has also helped to fund a great deal of Dr. Fielder's work) decided to begin to solve this problem by starting the African Mission Healthcare Foundation. The goal of the Foundation is to identify projects and programs being run by Christian medical missionaries in Africa, and to provide them with the necessary funding.