New York native, Dr. Rick Hodes, JDC’s Medical Director in Ethiopia, examining a young Rwandan refugee

Dr. Rick Hodes examines a young Rwandan refugee with the help of an Ethiopian nurse, in an out-patient clinic which was housed in tents. In response to the desperate need for emergency assistance for some two million Rwandans who had fled the carnage of their nation’s civil war, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) dispatched a medical team to Goma, Zaire, a border town overwhelmed with 850,000 Rwandan refugees. The team was led by JDC’s Medical Director in Ethiopia, along with five Ethiopian health professionals. In partnership with the International Rescue Committee (IRC), the team set up a 50 bed field hospital at the Kibumba Refugee Camp near Goma, which was home to some 160,000 refugees. JDC also became involved in a number of long term rebuilding projects in the country including assisting with agricultural production and technical training, to the support of the rising number of orphans as a result of the massacre. Since 1914, nonsectarian assistance has been an essential element of JDC’s work based on the Jewish principle of tikkun olam (repairing the world). But it formalized that mission in 1986 with the establishment of the International Development Program (IDP), through which JDC provides a Jewish response to human suffering wrought by natural and manmade disasters.