Richard A. Sacra
Doctor of Public Service
You are a man of grace and a physician with purpose who always answers calls for help, even when they come from a great distance. You returned to Liberia to deliver babies at the height of the Ebola crisis. You put yourself at risk to provide relief for your ailing colleagues at the missionary hospital near Monrovia. Though your great and generous heart was covered by protective clothing, you too were stricken with the deadly disease within a month of your arrival.
While the World Health Organization has now declared Liberia free of Ebola, last year at this time, the nation was in profound suffering. Tragically, nearly half of the more than 10,000 Ebola patients succumbed to the microscopic killer. Many of them were your friends, colleagues and patients. As an outstanding family physician, you mounted a heroic effort to provide needed medical care to many mothers and infants in Liberia’s fragile health care system. When you became ill, you were airlifted back to the United States, where you received a bold, experimental treatment regimen at a Nebraska hospital. You thanked God and the remarkable medical team for your full recovery.
You returned to Liberia to heed the call in the same way fire fighters, police officers and soldiers respond immediately to the sound of an alarm. They run the wrong way – toward the danger, rather than away from it. You also have a higher purpose. Service to God and to others orients your personal compass and determines the direction of the intentional life you have lived with your wife Debbie and your sons. In the spirit of St. Ignatius, you are an inspiration to all who are discerning paths that will make a difference in our world.
You and Debbie have called Liberia your second home. You first journeyed to West Africa in 1995 as a medical missionary with the international Christian aid organization Serving in Mission, or SIM. You have worked tirelessly during many extended stays in Liberia to help put in place the new health care infrastructure needed to ensure that women get prenatal care, and that they and their infants have healthy births. A graduate of UMass Medical School, you have been with the department of family medicine and community health at the UMass Memorial Medical Center since 2010. In addition, you are an assistant professor of family medicine and community health.
Your colleagues call you a gifted physician who shoulders extra work. You are also a devout Christian and a committed healer, ready to provide needed medical services to communities from Worcester County to West Africa. You were honored last month as a Hometown Hero by the American Red Cross of Central Massachusetts and presented with a Britney Gengel International Humanitarian Award for your courageous work as a medical missionary against the backdrop of the Ebola crisis
You returned to Liberia again in January to care for patients with general health problems. You are using your experience as an Ebola survivor as a platform from which to speak on behalf of the people of West Africa who continue to suffer.
That all may know of our esteem for you and for the vital work you perform as a tireless medical missionary in West Africa, where the Ebola virus has taken lives and disrupted access to health care, the College of the Holy Cross confers upon you this day the degree, Doctor of Public Service, honoris causa.