One of my favorite surgeons of all time was a “flying doctor” in Africa: an Ethiopian saint named Dr. Asrat Mengiste.

Asrat was part of an amazing group called AMREF based in Kenya. They were one of our very best partners in Africa. They had a fleet of planes that they used to fly surgeons, doctors, anesthesiologists and nurses all over Africa to provide surgeries in places that had no hospitals and/or no surgeons. Asrat led their surgical program and provided thousands of surgeries himself.

“The operations make a big difference to the lives of my patients.” Asrat said. “Most of them have suffered a long time, often since birth.”

Here’s a typical day in the life of Dr. Asrat. The morning after he flew from Ethiopia to the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre in Moshi, Tanzania, it’s 8:00 am and almost 100 patients are lined up and waiting for him and his team.

Twenty local doctors are waiting in the operating room. Asrat is going to train these younger surgeons and doctors as he changes lives right before their eyes. As he begins the first surgical procedure of the day, Dr Mengiste explains every action, every technique and protocol, and every decision. Over four very long days, Asrat operates on 40 patients who would never have received surgery if I have Asrat and AMREF didn’t come here.

Most of these patients have traveled very far away to receive their surgery. They realize it is probably the only chance to receive free surgery so they go to great lengths to get here. They borrow money from family and friends. They sell livestock. Their chickens and goats. They travel night and day, sometimes from different countries, to reach our partner hospital and the possibility of free surgery.

They show up with a broad range of medical problems. Some have been born with cleft lips and or palates. Clefts can make it impossible for a baby or child to eat or speak properly. When they grow up they are not allowed to attend school, have any friends or get a job. They can never get married and raise a family of their own.

Many of them have been severely burned. In much of the developing world people still cook, heat and light their homes using fire. Nearly 99% of Tanzanians cook on open fires. Too often children fall into fires or scald themselves with boiling liquid, cheap propane cook stoves explode, kerosene lamps are tipped over and light straw huts on fire, small children fall into open fires for cooking or come into contact with live electrical wires.

More than half the people who are burned die naturally burns from their poverty. Because they cannot afford the expense of dressings or artificial skin that would save their lives. The ones who live are usually disfigured and deformed by horrible burn scars they can make it impossible to walk or use their arms. When severe burns are not treated, they form thick cobwebs of scar tissue, causing crippling deformities, making the simplest of tasks such as dressing or eating, impossible. Many of these patients have their chins fused to their chests. Luckily there is a simple plastic surgery procedure called a “ release” that can separate fused skin and give patients back the use of their legs, arms, fingers etc.

More than 60% of the patients Asrat saves are children. Among those awaiting surgery is four-month-old Angelina, whose mouth and nostrils are badly disfigured due to a cleft lip and palate. Angelina’s mother carried her for six hours to the nearest bus stop to bring her to the Amref Health Africa team in Moshi. Angelina cannot be breastfed because of her cleft lip and palate – her mother has to feed her milk and porridge drop by drop. This works but not very well, you can see Angelina’s ribs and she is very skinny. If she does not receive surgery soon she will die.

Angelina is first on the operating table. As with all his operations, Asrat gives a running play-by-play of the surgery he is performing for crowd that is eager to learn. He explains to observing medical students everything about the condition, answers questions and talks them through the surgery and after care.

This simple operation transforms Angelina’s life. Her mother is overjoyed by the results. “Before the operation, I had so many worries that she would not survive, have friends or find a husband. Now I am sure she will live a normal, happy life.”

The next patient is a boy who fell into an open cooking fire and severely burned his hand. His little fingers were badly burned and have not healed well – his forefinger is now attached to his thumb by scar tissue. During surgery, Dr Mengiste separates the boy’s thumb and finger so they move independently again. It’s a small operation that will make an enormous difference to this little boy’s life.

This is just one of around 2,500 life-changing surgeries a year that Asrat and his colleagues at AMREF provide in the most remote, poor and godforsaken places all over Africa.

These modern-day good Samaritans perform miracles in places where miracles are in very short supply. The challenges of performing these surgeries in such remote, rural hospitals that cannot be reached by road are overwhelming. Water supplies and electricity are scarce, the surgical facilities are outdated and inadequate and the O.R. medical equipment is often obsolete. The power was out all the time. One hospital that I visited in Northern Uganda had no running water or electricity. (But they did have a leper colony.)

I have been with Asrat and his team in Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Ethiopia and I have seen first-hand the incredible commitment and dedication of these flying doctors.

“Our missions are usually the only hope, the only chance these people have of receiving surgery,” Asrat told us. “And although we help a couple thousand patients a year, most of the people who need surgery and Africa with their entire lives for help that never comes.”

It amazed me how they could continue with their mission in the face of so many challenges and so much futility. I think most people would just give up and say what’s the use.

But not Asrat.

I asked him once what keeps him going in the face of such adversity.

He told me it was simple.

“We focus on the lives that we can save – not the ones that we can’t. And every year we grow. We go to more places. We train more doctors. We help more people. And we provide more surgeries than we did the year before. That’s progress. It feels good. And it keeps us going.”

People like Asrat and his colleagues keep me going.

Their selflessness, their perseverance, their commitment to helping the poor and the forgotten is just simply breathtaking.

They inspire me to do more.