Giving African doctors a boost

In Liberia, where the government health care system has a budget that’s 12 percent of what it was 12 years ago, there are 27 government-paid doctors. There were about 200 in 1990, and those who remain haven’t had a pay raise in 17 years.
“Taxi drivers in Liberia make more than medical doctors,” said Ray Rickman, co-founder with Rajiv Kumar of Adopt a Doctor, a Providence-based nonprofit. “Including doctors with Harvard degrees, they make $100 a month from the government.”
Adopt a Doctor aims to subsidize those doctors’ incomes to keep them working in hospitals in four of Africa’s poorest countries: Liberia, Mali, Malawi and Sierra Leone.
The nonprofit got its start in February five years ago, when Ray Rickman – a former deputy secretary of state, state representative and Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island employee – came down with the flu and stayed home from work for the first time in 10 years. With a blanket on his lap, Rickman sat listening to radio news and heard a report about a doctor in Mali who didn’t have enough supplies. That doctor was thinking about leaving Mali, where 64 percent of the population is below the poverty line, to earn more in London or Newark.
Rickman, who said each doctor in Africa saves 1,000 lives a year, made a decision to keep that doctor working in Mali.
“I basically found him, tracked him down and sent him an e-mail saying, ‘What would it take for you to stay?’ ” said Rickman. “He shocked me and said, ‘I make $90 a month. If I had $200, I could stay.’ So I said, fine.”
Each month, Adopt a Doctor is now subsidizing 16 doctors. Four are in each of the countries, and each has agreed to spend seven years working there.
“I can’t tell you how powerful it is,” said Rickman. “Because every time we think about slacking off, we just think about the doctor in that clinic … [he] is making the difference in life or death.”
In Mali, about 1.9 percent of people have AIDS, but the number is much higher in the other countries. In Liberia it’s 5.9 percent; in Sierra Leone it’s 7 percent; and in Malawi it’s 14.2 percent of the population, according to the CIA 2007 World Factbook.
Although there has been a positive response in the past five years, Rickman has at times heard complaints about the process the nonprofit uses to pick doctors – which is, simply, to let somebody in the country do so.
“People were saying, ‘How do you know the doctor’s not a communist?’ ” said Rickman. “And I said, ‘I think when you go to get your broken arm fixed, you don’t care.’ We don’t care anything about the doctors’ politics or religion. The only thing we care about is whether they’re a practicing doctor.”
To subsidize the doctors, the nonprofit aims at bringing in $1,700 a month. But some months are easier than others; in December donors might give about $6,000. And former state senator and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Myrth York donates $2,000 each January.
Many of the donors are in Europe. The Web site, www.AdoptaDoctor.org, draws donations from Sweden and Denmark – usually about three a month.
There is another motivation for Adopt a Doctor, too. Rickman and Kumar are looking to inspire others to take the model that they’ve created and expand on it.
“We had to make a policy, a real strong decision. I cannot raise money for 400 doctors or 300 doctors,” said Rickman. “You have to give up your life to do that. I’m beginning to gray a little, and I have to pay a little more attention to making an income and less to saving the world, so that otherwise when I’m on Social Security somebody will have to save me.” •