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CEO & Co-founder, CURE International, since 1996
Former CEO, orthopedic manufacturing company
Univ. of Pittsburgh Medical School 1963
CBN.com – In the '70s and '80s, Scott opened a string of what turned out to be highly successful rehab hospitals in the USA. With the sale of that enterprise in 1983, Scott and his wife, Sally, had the opportunity to live a very comfortable lifestyle, but they felt like living comfortably wasn’t enough. While Scott developed a successful medical practice, he and Sally started making medical missions trips to Africa in 1986. It was an experience that never left him.
In 1990, Scott was offered a position as CEO of a struggling orthopedic manufacturing company. He left his medical practice and after four years, his business expertise saved the company. In 1994, Scott merged it with another company and with the additional resources, Scott felt like his ultimate calling had arrived. He wanted to build teaching hospitals for poor, disabled children in places that were totally void of modern medical care. In 1999, Scott was awarded with the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons annual Humanitarian Award.
So far they have built hospitals in Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, Afghanistan, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Zambia, and Ethiopia. Besides working in the hospital themselves, the Harrisons raise money to support their work and arrange for American and British doctors to serve at CURE facilities for short stays (two weeks to a year) or long stays (a year to a lifetime). In 2003, Cure International opened their first hospital in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Thousands of Afghans were helped and healed – more than 34,000 in the first five months. Since then approximately 10,000 are seen each month. This hospital is the major provider of treatment for tuberculosis (a big problem in this country). Recently, at the request of the Afghan government, Cure took over a bombed out hospital in Kabul, which is still under renovations. It is already considered the best hospital in the country. Focus is on young children (since 25% of kids under the age of five die) and women in childbirth (they have a high mortality rate because there are few hospitals for them to deliver their babies).
Patients are welcomed at the CURE International hospitals with no regard to race, religion or ability to pay for services. Through developing a series of networks across the U.S., Scott has enlisted aid from hospitals, pharmaceutical firms, businesses, and federal agencies that provided excess medical and office equipment, medicines and volunteers. He continues to underwrite the expenses of the current 18 US-based staff.
The most common orthopedic problem CURE workers encounter is clubfeet and birth defects. He says working in Third World countries gives him the opportunity of doing things he dreamed of when he chose his medical specialty. “Orthopedic” means “straight child.” According to Scott, there must be a spiritual direction in order to be effective. Many countries, like those in Africa, believe that birth defects are caused by evil spirits. Given their superstitions, he says some village chiefs say no to surgery because they believe cutting a person will release the diseased spirit and spread illness. There are over 125 million poverty-stricken children worldwide who suffer from debilitating physical conditions with little or no hope for a cure.
Each CURE hospital has a spiritual team to visit patients once a day and conduct a Bible study. “I know it’s not fashionable to impose our culture on theirs,” says Scott. “But their idea of demons can be so harmful that they use their own religious beliefs instead of science to combat illness.” Once, Scott says there was a baby born with an open sac on the base of his spine. The village witch doctor made a concoction with animal manure and spread it over the baby. He had a temperature of 105 and did not survive. “He would have lived if they’d just bandaged it,” says Scott.
Scott says he grew up in a Christian home but he didn’t have a relationship with Christ until he was 40. His greatest desire is to provide a life of running, dancing and smiling for children who know now only crawling and crying.
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