Challenge Article: In Ghana, a broken bone can mean starvation. This doctor wants to change that.

Dr. Joseph Marotta, an orthopedic surgeon from Albany, New York, had always intended to use his medical skills to help people in developing countries. But the final inspiration didn’t come until he was 50 years old.

“I was sitting at Mass one day and there was an Italian missionary who was working in Sudan and Somalia,” Marotta told CNA.

The missionary, he recounted, said: “We need your money, I come to ask for your financial support. But if you think that putting a $20 bill in the collection plate today absolves you of your responsibility to your fellow man who is suffering, you’re wrong.”

Those words prompted Marotta to start the Medicus Christi project. He and his supporters aim to develop an orthopedic surgery center and a medical training center on the grounds of Holy Family Hospital and Nursing School in the village of Berekum in Ghana’s Brong Ahafo region.

Marotta said the project aims “to bring compassionate, modern medical care and medical training to the poor people of the developing world.”

In developed countries, people take for granted the ability to treat accident injuries and broken legs, not to mention arthritic conditions, congenital abnormalities, bone tumors and deformities.

In Ghana, the lack of medical care can be life-threatening.

Read more at CatholicNewsAgency.com…