The CEO of a hospital that was profiled by Oprah Winfrey on her TV show will be returning to Sydney next month to share his experiences.
CMS missionary Mark Bennett will return to Sydney with his family in June after having spent the last two years as CEO of the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital.
The hospital was founded by Australian Dr Catherine Hamlin, who has devoted nearly 50 years to providing free reconstructive surgery to more than 25,000 African girls and women suffering from fistulas.
In 2005, talkshow host Oprah Winfrey visited the hospital, speaking with Dr Hamlin and raising awareness of the work among the American public.
Shortly after, Sydney Anglican Mark Bennett became CEO of the hospital.
"Oprah spent the day at the hospital, gave $100 to each patient, plus a designer dress and make-up. The girls loved this," Mark says.
"This generated enormous interest in the US and the support from there has been very strong, so it really made the hospital and the problem that we treat much better known and understood in the USA."
Loving Ethiopian life
Mark says living and working in Ethiopia "is great'.
"It is great to be working at the hospital, such an established and well-respected place, with someone as much loved as Dr Hamlin," Mark says.
"Ethiopia is a very beautiful country" it is just so upsetting that there are so many problems and many people live with such hardship."
The fistula hospital is soon expanding from one main site in Addis Ababa to having five regional centres, with the main site becoming more specialised in training and clinical research.
As CEO, Mark says overseeing this growth is a big challenge.
"With this big expansion there is a need to develop management structures that have not been in place previously," he says.
"We are also planning to start a prevention initiative, training midwives and deploying them into rural settings."
Mark's wife, Annette, who is a midwife, is working on this project along with a team of Ethiopian colleagues.
Keeping it Christ-centred
Mark works to ensure that the Christian nature of the hospital is embedded in the way it hospital operates and makes decisions.
"Dr Hamlin, as the founder, has her own deep and obvious faith and we do a number of things such as have morning prayers and Bible reading."
There is also a chaplain working on site several days a week, a work which Mark hopes to build upon.
The hospital also has two literacy teachers who pray with patients and give them taped stories and Bible readings to listen to. They are also developing recorded messages for rural areas, that contain health information and a Bible verse and story.
Mark says he and his four children, Alleytia, Dylan, Lewis and Martin have not found it unusually difficult living in Ethiopia.
"In some ways this lifestyle draws us closer together and we do more as a family than we may in Australia," he says.
"There is also something good in our children seeing day-to-day the reality of how most of the world lives" in great pain, poverty and injustice and for them to think through how they may respond as Christians."
On 22 June, Mark and Annette Bennett will speak about their work at the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital at the CMS Friday Fellowship.
