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Adopting Hope: The Doctor Who Became Family to Children in Ethiopia
Dr. Rick Hodes, a spinal surgeon practicing in Ethiopia for decades, operates a program treating hundreds of patients annually with conditions ranging from scoliosis to tuberculosis-related deformities. Earlier in his career, Hodes adopted five children in order to get them life-altering medical care in the United States.
Dr. Rick Hodes, an American physician who has been based in Ethiopia for almost four decades, recalls a day back in 1999 at St. Mother Theresa’s Mission in Addis Ababa that changed his life. He was working when two young boys walked past him. Each had tuberculosis of the spine, resulting in a 90-degree and 120-degree angle in their respective backs.
Dr. Hodes asked the nuns about the boys and was told they were without caregivers. Even though he was an experienced doctor who had been in-country for about a decade, seeing the boys’ condition impacted him.
He reached out to several U.S. surgeons for help and received one “no” after another – and that’s when he managed to get a response at all. At an impasse, he decided to go in another direction with his inquiries.
“I asked the Almighty, ‘What do you want me to do?’ I didn’t get an answer and that was it,” Dr. Hodes recalled. “But three days later, I got a message in my brain and it was ‘I’m offering you a chance to help these boys… don’t say no.’”
The only way to get the boys, ages six and 12 at the time, the lifesaving surgeries they needed, was to adopt them and add them to his U.S. insurance policy. So he did.
Today, Dr. Hodes, 71, is the Ethiopia Medical Director for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, or JDC, and founder of the JDC’s spine program, which he started in 2006 and has saved thousands of lives. He is also the father of five children, all of whom he adopted in an attempt to get them the health care they needed.
It’s a life he could have never imagined when he was in medical school and that has continuously defied expectations, mostly his own. Dr. Hodes said he did not expect to live his adult life in Ethiopia, did not expect to adopt five children, and did not expect to play a critical role in transforming spinal cord care in the region – much less become the subject of an HBO documentary and other documentaries, articles, and a book.
All Dr. Hodes knew during medical school was that he was drawn to global health. The problem, he shared during a call from his home in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, is that even now, no clear career path exists for those with such an interest.
A patient walks with support at the spine center. (Photo courtesy of Kora Images)
Like so much of Dr. Hodes’s life, the path forward would emerge from a mix of happenstance, reflection, and simply taking action.
During medical school, he had stints caring for people in Southeast Asia and Bangladesh before going to Sudan right after finishing his final year to care for refugees there. In 1985, following a three-year residency at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center and becoming board-certified in internal medicine, he received a Fulbright Scholarship to teach internal medicine in Ethiopia.
He spent two and a half years there, but even after that experience, Hodes still didn’t see himself as a long-termer.
“There was no way I thought I’d be living the rest of my life here,” he said.
After returning to the U.S., Hodes found himself being drawn toward his Judaism, which spurred him to move to Israel. One morning in 1990, while reading an Israeli newspaper, he learned that many Ethiopian Jews, who were trying to escape Ethiopia and emigrate to Israel due to political instability and persecution, had become stuck in Addis. Many were in dire need of medical care, which they did not have access to, having moved, en masse, from more rural areas.
“I called the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and said, ‘I’m an American doctor, I’ve lived in Ethiopia, I speak Amharic — can I help?’” he recalls. Thirty-five years later, he’s still on the job.
Ethiopian immigrants, along with JDC staff, arrive in Israel during 1991’s Operation Solomon (Photo courtesy of JDC Archives/UJA Press Service Photo by Zion)
From Emergencies to a Calling
In May 1991, Hodes and JDC played a crucial role in Operation Solomon, the historic airlift that brought over 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel in just 36 hours. But the work didn’t end with the operation. He stayed behind to care for those left behind, and in doing so, he found his life’s mission.
Hodes’s focus shifted from emergencies to chronic care. As he was directing the JDC medical program for potential immigrants, he began volunteering at Mother Teresa Mission, a self-described “home for sick and dying destitutes,” in his free time.
At Mother Teresa’s, Hodes encountered a stream of young people suffering from all manner of illnesses and hardship, experiencing what he described as “the largest collection of worst spine deformities in the world.” Hodes and JDC set up a spine and heart care program at Mother Teresa’s to address the need. Among the children needing care were his now-sons.
For the doctor, it was a clear choice. “I was trying to save their lives and I realized that the only way I could get them free surgery was if they had health insurance and the only way they could get health insurance is if I adopted them,” he said matter-of-factly.
That act of compassion marked the beginning of several adoptions to connect children to care.
Over the years, Dr. Hodes has adopted five Ethiopian children, all of whom are thriving including a son who is now a pharmacist in the U.S. and one who is a successful businessman in Ethiopia.
“He gave me a new opportunity, a new purpose, a new life,” said Mesfin Hodes, one of Dr. Hode’s children, during a TED talk in Mexico. Semegnew, one of the first children adopted, referred to his father as “the saver of the world” in an application he submitted for his father to be recognized as a “CNN Hero,” which was accepted.
Among the other children whose lives have been saved by Dr. Hodes is one named Mesfin Yosef, from Sidamo, who came to St. Mother Theresa’s to die. Yosef felt he was a burden to his family due to his illness. Hodes determined that the illness was heart failure caused by a heart valve problem, which Dr. Hodes treated. Several more procedures followed leaving the boy in good health. Today, he works as a perfusionist at the Mayo Clinic, and calls Dr. Hodes “his angel.” Yosef recently returned to Ethiopia with his colleague, a heart surgeon, and they operated on 15 patients.
Mayo Clinic Perfusionist Mesfin Yosef (R) with his family in the U.S. (Courtesy photo)
During a stay in Gondar, Dr. Hodes happened to walk past a man and a small orphan girl with a severe back issue. The man was her uncle, and Dr. Hodes was able to arrange travel to Addis for her, where he cared for her in his household, which sometimes swells to as many as 25 people, some of whom live in another local house. The girl received care in Ghana and grew up in his home. Today she is enrolled in a master’s computer science program in Oklahoma. This, and several other of his cases have turned into award-winning documentaries.
Dr. Hodes’s life so far is peppered with these types of events, miracles, or coincidences, in all shapes and sizes. There was the time he asked a woman at an airport to hold his Tefillin, phylacteries worn by Jewish men during morning prayers, while he went to the lavatory. They began to talk and he was able to diagnose her irregular heartbeat with his Apple Watch, even writing a kind of doctor’s note to the airline excusing her from flying. Or the stranger in a Minneapolis synagogue who happened to be a skull-base surgeon — the exact specialist needed to save a patient’s life. Dr. Hodes was only there because he overslept and wanted to pray with his Teffilin in a community setting.
“Stuff like this happens to me all the time,” Dr. Hodes said, his voice tinged with wonder.
A Framework for Care into the Future
In addition to chance, Dr. Hodes has also played an instrumental role in solidifying care options for the region’s hardest cases. In 2006, JDC and Hodes partnered with Dr. Oheneba Boachie-Adjei, one of the world’s leading spine surgeons, to launch a spine program based at Mother Teresa’s Mission. Today, it’s the largest of its kind in Ethiopia, treating hundreds of patients annually with conditions ranging from scoliosis to tuberculosis-related deformities. The program has trained over 1,000 providers.
“These are cases you’d never see in the U.S.,” Dr. Hodes said. “The natural history of untreated spinal disease, that’s what I see every day.” The program’s success has also catalyzed interest and support from the government, which had been lacking.
Ethiopia’s government recently allocated space in a leading Addis hospital, St. Paul’s, for the new National Spine Center. JDC will renovate and equip the Center while providing ongoing training to local doctors and health professionals, aiming to enhance their capacity to treat a greater number of patients locally. Direct Relief staff met with Dr. Hodes in Ethiopia earlier this year about medical needs and potential support.
Dr. Rick Hodes holding a patient’s hand during a consultation at the spine center. (Photo courtesy of Kora Images)
The program relies on a global network of surgeons, with patients sent to Ghana, India, or treated locally depending on the severity of their condition. “Some cases require six months of traction before surgery,” Dr. Hodes explained.
Part of Dr. Hodes’s effectiveness in both medicine and parenting, beyond a deep empathy and desire to help, can be traced to his deep knowledge of, and respect for, local cultures and ethnic groups. He casually rattles off several subgroups of a local ethnic group during the conversation, and said he often prefers to conduct visits in Amharic versus English, since he’s able to communicate more effectively with his patients.
Even as his program has grown in its capacity to care for Ethiopia’s most difficult cases, and as he continues into his eighth decade, Dr. Hodes shows no signs of slowing down. His son Semegnew noted that his dad often eats in his car to save time and scrimps on sleep so that he can see more patients.
“Retirement isn’t in my vocabulary,” Dr. Hodes said. “My friends are retiring, but I have a mission.”
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