Dr. Benaim, a charismatic gentleman, influenced by caring for victims of a house fire in the neighborhood of the Cosme Argerich Hospital, Buenos Aires, where at the time he was in training in general surgery, furnished the stimulus for a career-long devotion to solving all aspects of the burn problem. He is credited with providing the leadership for the development of organized burn care in the Spanish and Portuguese speaking worlds.

He created the first burn unit in Argentina in the Cosme Argerich Hospital (1948). As the Director of the Institute for Burns, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery in Buenos Aires (1956), he established a teaching program in Burn Pathology and Burn Treatment that included all members of the burn team. This effort provided the personnel for regionalization of burn care in Argentina with the subsequent establishment of twenty burn units dispersed throughout the country.

Soon thereafter, Dr. Benaim fostered an annual National Burn Prevention campaign. In 1964, he expanded his efforts beyond Argentina by creating the Ibero-Latin American Committee for Burn Prevention and Care of Burns. In the early 1980s, through his leadership, a Foundation was organized for funding of burn research, prevention, and rehabilitation. As a part of this effort, he founded Revista Argentina de Quemaduras (Argentine Burns Journal), the world’s first Spanish language journal devoted to the burn problem.

He was also a founding member of the Argentine Society of Plastic Surgery, the Argentine Burn Association, the Latin American Federation of Plastic Surgery, the Latin American Federation of Burn Associations, and the International Society for Burn Injuries. For this monumental effort, Dr. Benaim received several high honors in his native Argentina plus the Order of Bernardo O'Higgins from the Chilean Government (1968), the Gold Badge from Spain (1968), and the Whitaker International Burns Prize (1985).