Gerard “Jerry” A. Engh, M.D. has been selected as the 2018 American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons (AAHKS) Humanitarian Award recipient. Dr. Engh founded Operation Walk Virginia in 2006, which has provided hip and knee replacements to people in Managua, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama, and Bolivia. The Virginia chapter was one of the first to branch off from the Operation Walk chapter in Los Angeles founded by Lawrence D. Dorr, M.D.
Dr. Engh made it a habit to bring along guest surgeons to his mission trips, and many have since established their own chapters and Operation Walk missions. A forward-thinker when it comes to training physicians from abroad, Dr. Engh vision brings doctors from the host countries to the U.S. to learn hip and knee replacement. This enables the physicians to share their new skills in their own country.
Once obtaining his undergraduate degree at Davidson College, Dr. Engh “…attended medical school at the University of Virginia. Following an internship and residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital, he spent two years as a major in the Army Medical Corps. He then joined his brother working at The Anderson Orthopaedic Clinic in Virginia, which had been founded by his father, Dr. Otto Anderson Engh.”
Dr. Engh retired from the practice in 2013.
Dr. Engh commented to OTW, “During the decades of the 1980s and ’90s we would host what was called bioskills programs and surgeons from around the world would observe live surgery in a conference setting adjacent to the OR. We are still setup to host these at our hospital, but they require a sponsor. At many hospitals you can arrange to take one or two surgeons into the OR to observe. We have in-country surgeons scrub and participate in surgery on our trips. We also will invite a surgeon to visit us from a host country prior to our trip.”
“A bigger problem is getting implants that are pricey for the surgeons to use in their country. This problem was solved for long bone fracture care by the SIGN program developed by Dr. Lewis Zirkle. He created a company that manufactures and provides free fracture repair implants around the world. This is a model for what we might do. We need to develop a generic hip and knee implant that is acceptable worldwide.”
