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(UGANDA) Director Lim Hyeon-seok: Uganda’s Lifeline for 400,000 Residents, Awarded 36th Asan Prize

by ubf media
Dec 03, 2024
965 reads

The 36th Asan Award, Director Lim Hyeon-seok, the ‘family doctor’ of 400,000 marginalized Ugandans for 24 years!

Asan Prize winner Director Lim Hyun-seok left for Uganda, Africa, a country suffering from poor medical conditions, in 2000 after obtaining his pediatric specialist qualification, and has been dedicated to providing quality medical services and treating diseases to residents who are excluded from medical benefits.

Director Lim Hyun-seok dreamed of a life of service to poor patients in Africa since his days as a student at Kyungpook National University School of Medicine. In 1999, the year he obtained his pediatric specialist qualification, he heard from a senior at school working in Uganda about the country’s medical environment and the need for establishing a local hospital, and decided to make that dream a reality.

Director Lim quit his hospital in June 2000 and left for Uganda with his wife, a medical school classmate, and their two young children. In order to make it easier for more patients to use the hospital, he opened Bethesda Clinic in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, in January 2002.

The small hospital, which started with five employees, expanded to a two-story building with one basement floor in 2013. The name was also changed to Bethesda Medical Center, and currently, 37 medical staff and employees in 6 departments are working, and a total of 300,000 patients, including an average of 1,900 patients per month, are treated. They treat general patients at 30-50% of the cost of local private hospitals, and provide free treatment to residents of slum areas and the disabled.

In Uganda, there are many villages without doctors or medical facilities. Director Lim Hyeon-seok first established a clinic in an island area without doctors for residents of underprivileged areas who have difficulty visiting hospitals, and has treated 45,000 residents over the past 15 years. He also conducted medical camps in areas where refugees who fled the civil war entered Uganda to settle, and has treated 38,000 patients over the past 23 years.

In Uganda, there is a lack of medical services for pregnancy and childbirth, so there are many patients with cerebral palsy, developmental disabilities, and epilepsy, which are complications during childbirth. Director Lim Hyeon-seok received a one-year residency in the Department of Pediatric Neurology at Kyungpook National University Hospital from 2021 to treat pediatric patients with epilepsy, and opened an epilepsy clinic at Bethesda Medical Center in May 2022. He has also been constantly expanding his scope of activities to help needy patients in the local area, such as working as a volunteer doctor on Mondays and Thursdays at the Pediatrics Department of Mulago National Hospital in Uganda, which is short on medical staff.