Max’s Savior Complex three-part documentary details the complicated history of white missionary work in Africa through the case study of American Renee Bach, who opened a clinic in Uganda for malnourished children in 2009, without any kind of medical training. 105 children died in or after being in her care.
Who is Renee Bach?
Renee Bach is a devout Evangelical Virginia native who traveled to Jinja, Uganda in 2007 to volunteer at a missionary-run orphanage. Convinced she had found her calling, and that it was coming from God, she returned in 2009 to provide meals to children in the Masese district twice a week, under the banner of a charity she called Serving His Children. Soon enough, she was asked by the local pediatric hospital to assist with malnourished children and turned her home into a nutrition center.
According to NPR, between 2010 and 2015, when the clinic was shut down, Bach welcomed 940 severely malnourished children, taking it upon herself to carry out medical procedures she was not remotely prepared for, such as blood transfusions and inserting an IV. A North Dakota registered nurse, Jackie Kramlich, decided to join Bach, who was 22 by then, “with admiration,” NPR reported. It didn’t take long before she realized just how much the missionary was in over her head. She quit the clinic and sent a letter of concern to the charity’s board of directors, but only years later, in 2015, did she report Bach to the Ugandan police. The clinic was immediately shut down.
Where is Renee Bach now?
Bach was not only the subject of HBO’s Savior Complex documentary but also willingly and extensively participated in it, arguing her side of the story. The high school graduate eventually reopened a treatment center in a different Jinja district with funding from Serving His Children and a partnership with the country’s Ministry of Health. She didn’t contribute to any medical treatment.
In 2019, Primah Kwagala, a Ugandan civil rights attorney, sued Bach on behalf of two mothers, whose children had died either at Bach’s clinic or soon after being there. At some point, the bad publicity and the animosity drove Bach to move back to Virginia, where she lives now with her two children. Per NPR, The former missionary agreed to pay $9,500 to each of the parents, as long as there was “no admission of liability.”
In the Jackie Jesko directed-and-produced Max docu-series, Bach maintains her stance that she helped a lot more children than she harmed. In 2019 she told NPR “It wasn’t ideal. But what do you do in a non-ideal situation?”