Meet Dr. Rick

Dr. Hodes is an American doctor from Long Island, New York. He is the medical director of JDC’s Ethiopia Spine and Heart project.

He explained “I wanted to be an internist. I like to think. And I love long-term relationships with patients. It never occurred to me to become a spine specialist while I was in medical school in Rochester, NY. I always saw myself working overseas. After internal medicine training in the Johns Hopkins system, I got a Fulbright Fellowship to teach at Addis Ababa University. I did that for over 2 years.

Later, I was hired by the JDC to medically assist the Ethiopian immigrants to Israel. I participated in Operation Solomon, which airlifted 14,400 immigrants to Israel in 24 hours in 1990. We noted a significant problem of tuberculosis in that group, and started hundreds on modern, short-course supervised therapy. It saved a lot of lives.

In 1999, volunteering at Mother Teresa’s Mission, I met 2 abandoned orphans with tuberculosis of the spine. I knew that if I did not get them surgery, they would likely be paralyzed and die early. I realized that I had the ability to adopt them and get them surgery. But adopting an abandoned orphan – that means we’re spending the rest of our lives together. I prayed and after a few days, the Almighty sent a fax to my brain. It said: “I’m offering you a chance to help these boys, don’t say no.”

More spine patients kept coming. I did what I could to help.

In 2005, I met Dr. Oheneba Boachie-Adjei, a Ghanian-American spine surgeon in New York. He had founded FOCOS (Foundation for Orthopedics and Complex Spines) to help Africans with spinal deformities. After a day together, we felt that we could work together successfully.

We are approaching 1000 Ethiopian patients sent to Ghana over the past 13 years.