AFRICAN MISSION HEALTHCARE

African Mission Healthcare (AMH) strengthens African mission hospitals to serve people in greatest need. While Christian medical missionaries and mission hospitals in Africa have proven very effective, support from their traditional sources has been waning. These Christian missionary physicians commit their entire careers towards treating patients, training African colleagues, creating systems and building institutions in very difficult conditions throughout sub-Saharan Africa. They routinely do what their colleagues in the United States regard as impossible when they learn about it. We believe that they provide an excellent foundation to build upon and warrant more support and investment. AMH provides them with much-needed resources, enabling these missionary physicians, their African colleagues, and the mission hospitals they serve, to provide quality and compassionate care for the African poor.

We take a proven approach that is effectively tailored to the African context. We believe that our approach is unique. We don’t offer a standard, easily repeatable solution; we spend time and resources identifying what is truly needed. AMH invests with trusted hospital partners, measuring the return in lives saved and changed.

We carefully select the hospitals with which we work, spend the time to understand and build relationships, and truly partner—not prescribing answers but together developing solutions. And we make decisions leveraging five distinctive values that maximize our impact in the African context:

We Listen: Guided by our mission hospital partners, we take the time to understand what’s needed and bring together resources to get the work done;
We’re Hands On: We work alongside our mission hospital partners, rolling up our sleeves to help provide life-changing care;
We Train: We multiply our impact by promoting leadership and developing the next generation of African healthcare professionals;
We See It Through: We address urgent needs while remaining committed to improving health systems for the long haul; and
We Get Results: We hold ourselves accountable to make decisions that transform lives every day and achieve lasting impact.

AMH Executive Director and co-founder Dr. Jon Fielder has served as a medical missionary in Kenya and Malawi since 2002. His clinical practice has included adult and pediatric medicine, consultation to surgeons, and oversight of HIV and tuberculosis care programs. He has traveled widely to teach. AMH VP of Operations Dr. Jonathan Mwiindi has a background in pharmacy, health program management, and public health. He was instrumental to the scale-up of HIV care in Kenya through the mission health sector. Together, Dr. Fielder and Mr. Mwiindi have two decades of experience within the African mission health sector. Scott Marcello currently serves as the President of African Mission Healthcare. He first met Dr. Jon Fielder, AMH Chief Executive and Co-founder, in 2006 and Jonathan Mwiindi, AMH Executive Vice President, in 2007 while they were both serving at Kijabe Hospital in Kenya. This began a long-term relationship which led to Scott joining the AMH Board in 2011 and, ultimately, joining the leadership team.AMH's programs in sub-Saharan Africa are supported in collaboration with African Mission Healthcare-Kenya, an audited implementing and monitoring non-governmental organization which also works closely with the faith-based health sector.

At AMH we believe that mission hospitals are a very important part of the solution in Africa.
African mission hospitals are well-positioned to improve clinical health systems on the continent. They already provide one-third of the medical care in sub-Saharan Africa and arguably a higher percentage of quality medical care. They are also training centers, producing qualified nurses, physician assistants and, increasingly, doctors and specialists. Mission hospitals have long, deep roots in the local communities they serve, having survived wars, famine, epidemics, and poverty—earning the trust of the people in those communities.

As investors, we choose our partners and investments carefully and then we cultivate and monitor progress to help them reach their full potential. Of course, we’re not looking for a financial return. Our goal is the sustainable ability to change lives through improved access to quality, compassionate healthcare.

Since AMH’s inception, we have worked with more than 35 mission hospital partners across 16 countries in Suh-Saharan Africa. Today we have active projects in 10 of these countries.

AMH provides support for hospitals and medical clinics in the Sub-Saharan region of Africa. It provides grants to multiple hospitals in the region to directly support clinical care and help with medical supplies, equipment and infrastructure, and medical education. In 2020, AMH made investments that will make possible more than 2,012,690 life-time patient visits and approximately 110,000 direct patient visits over the twelve-month period. AMH also enabled approximately 3,990 surgical and corrective procedures.

AMH's selected investments in equipment and infrastructure during 2020 included continued construction of the Cardiothoracic Center and related projects at Tenwek Hospital (Kenya), renovation and construction of a medical education building at Kijabe Hosptal (Kenya), major renovations at Maua Methodist Hospital (Kenya), training faculty housing at Nkhoma Hospital (Malawi), housing for medical residents (clinical trainees) at Kibuye Hope Hospital (Burundi), construction of a pediatric ward at Rwibaale medical center (Uganda), and continued electrical upgrades at Bongolo Hospital (Gabon). Our direct investments in clinical care and supplies involved 23 discrete projects at 19 different clinical partners in seven countries.

AMH also enabled training for 10,911 healthcare workers across 13 different course offerings. During 2020, AMH launched a new on-line platform to enable training tailored for African Clinical Officers (“COs”), who are medical professionals similar to Physician Assistants in the United States; this platform enables COs to receive credit for continuing professional education and also enabled extensive trainings despite the impacts of COVID-19.

AMH provides direct sponsorship for selected surgeries under its "Surgical Access For Everyone" (SAFE) program; these surgeries were conducted at hospital partners in Kenya, Tanzania, Ugandan, Ethiopia, Burundi, South Sudan, and Malawi. These surgical sponsorships not only directly assist the individual patients, but also reward the hospitals for performing quality surgery, enable important training and experience for surgical staff and residents, allow the hospitals to support their investments in expanded equipment and capacity, and promote overall quality at the facility. During 2020, the SAFE program made possible 2,021 surgeries at 12 hospital partners.