Renee Bach is from Bedford, Virginia. In an interview with The New Yorker, she said she was “a super plain-Jane, straight-up white girl” who “wanted to get married and have five kids” until she decided to go to Uganda as a missionary. She first visited the African nation in 2007 just after graduating from high school. Then in 2009, at the age of 19, she returned and set up her clinic — called by God, she said — to help Ugandan children. “This sounds like such a white-savior thing to say, but I wanted to try to meet a need that wasn’t being met,” she told The New Yorker.
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Her observation may have been apt — HBO’s new three-part documentary on Bach’s story is called “Savior Complex,” and her critics have accused her of acting on this, with devastating results. In a 2019 NPR report, witnesses said Bach performed medical procedures like giving blood transfusions and was caring for children who had diseases like HIV and pneumonia who should have been in an actual hospital — not a malnutrition clinic.
