As a medical doctor, Andrew Kaufman has been helping people all his professional life. He’s also done his fair share of volunteering for causes, especially in the Jewish community, that weren’t medically related. So it comes as no surprised that Dr. Kaufman was inspired to start volunteering his time as a neurosurgeon in Ethiopia after he heard another Jewish physician speak in Kansas City.
Three years ago the Jewish Federation hosted a visit by Rick Hodes, M.D., an American doctor who has lived and worked in Ethiopia for more than 20 years. As the medical director of Ethiopia for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Dr. Hodes has been in charge of the health of Ethiopians immigrating to Israel.
Dr. Kaufman had considered volunteering his services in underdeveloped countries before, but finally took action following Dr. Hodes’ presentation. A semi-retired neurosurgeon for Midwest Spine Care, Dr. Kaufman recently returned from spending a month in Addas Abbaba, the capital city of Ethiopia. It was his third visit to the country, the first two spent in the city of Gondar working in cooperation with the JDC.
“It’s the epicenter where all the black Jews from Ethiopia came from originally,” Dr. Kaufman explained.
There are no neurosurgeons in Gondar, so Dr. Kaufman taught general surgeons how to do simple neurological procedures. But this time he wanted to spend more concentrated time working with neurosurgeons, so he connected withthe Foundation for International Education in Neurological Surgery (FIENS), which sends volunteer neurosurgeons to developing countries to teach neurosurgical techniques and procedures, to help establish neurosurgery residency programs, and to lend their skills in the operating room. While in Ethiopia, Dr. Kaufman basically functions as a faculty member in neurosurgery at the Black Lion Hospital, the main university hospital of Addis Abbaba University Medical School.
He operated with the surgical residents, the local neurosurgeons and performed solo surgeries as well.
“Much of the time I simply supervised what they were doing,” explained Dr. Kaufman, who no longer performs surgery in Kansas City. He sees consultations two days a week.
“It’s as rewarding as anything I’ve ever done in my professional career,” said the doctor, who received his degree in medicine from Case-Western Reserve University, and completed his residency at Yale-New Haven Medical Center. Very active in the Jewish community, he is a returning member of the Village Shalom board of directors, having previously served from 2000-02. His community involvement also includes terms on the board of directors of Mid-America Coalition on Health Care, Menorah Medical Center Foundation, The Jewish Community Foundation, the Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City and Temple B’nai Jehudah. He also has served as president of the Metropolitan Medical Society Health Care Plan and the R.A. Bloch Cancer Management Center. He and his wife, Lynn, have two grown daughters.
Dr. Kaufman said he truly loved the time he’s spent in Ethiopia. Through the efforts of volunteers like himself, he’s proud that there will soon be more neurosurgeons in Ethiopia. Up until 2008 there were only three neurosurgeons in the entire country serving 76 million people. By contrast Dr. Kaufman estimates there are 30 neurosurgeons in Kansas City for about 1.8 million people.
“Here’s a country that has hardly any neurosurgeons and we’re going to have 22 neurosurgeons in just a few years. They will be able to treat substantial problems that are curable,” he said.
Until now every neurosurgeon in the country has been located in Addas Abbaba.
“But now we have residents from various areas of the country so we hope to get some neurosurgery out to other areas of the country by the time all the current graduates have completed their studies,” Dr. Kaufman said.
Besides training new surgeons, he’s gotten satisfaction of helping the six Ethiopian neurosurgeons “upgrade their skills and their surgical repertoire.”
“I taught them new ways of doing operations that they were doing in a much more tedious fashion. I taught them ways of doing them quicker so they can do more operations in a day,” he said.
Dr. Kaufman explained that his work in Ethiopia differs from the type of medical mission people often see featured on television or in newspapers. For instance he doesn’t bring a lot of equipment with him to Ethiopia.
“We teach them a lot in contrast to a typical medical mission where groups of five people or even 30 people will go to a country and take equipment. They’ll do 30 or 40 or 50 operations in the course of the week and then they go home,” he said.
Dr. Kaufman believes it’s more valuable to teach the doctors there how to do the operations.
“I think the dividends are multiplied and I think there is much more capability for improving the capabilities of the country. So I enjoy teaching them how to do things with the limited equipment that they have,” Dr. Kaufman said.
“I can already see, compared to my previous visits, new ways of thinking and new ways of operating that are going to pay dividends in the future,” he continued.
Because there are so few neurosurgeons in Ethiopia, Dr. Kaufman said there is a long waiting time for what we in the United States would call urgent surgery. He is hoping training more neurosurgeons will help address that problem.
He noted that the medical problems he sees in Ethiopia are drastically different than what he sees here. For example, brain tumors there are three to four times the size of tumors usually seen here.
“Patients in Ethiopia don’t seek medical treatment until they are in dire straits,” he explained. “We see very unusual infectious diseases involving the brain that are virtually unknown in this country.”
He also said that head trauma in Ethiopia is completely different than what’s normally seen here. The biggest head trauma there is known as stick injuries, caused by very rigid tree branches that are used to assault people. Being gored by a bull is also a common injury. Pedestrians being hit by automobiles are the fourth most common head injury.
He said doctors also see a “huge number of congenital anomalies in children.”
“This is a problem that early in my career I used to see with reasonable frequency but it’s now very rare in the U.S. because we give pregnant women vitamins that contain folic acid which prevents most of these birth anomalies,” he said.
