Organization: Kenyatta National Hospital
Region: Africa
Nationality: Kenya
Country: Kenya
Interests & expertise: Co-morbidities (NCDs, mental health, etc.)
Profession or occupation: Healthcare worker/social service provider
2024
What inspires you to work in the HIV field?
My community service during my high school breaks was frequently done in hospitals, where I came face to face with the agony of HIV and AIDS. This was in the early 2000s, before the widespread availability of antiretroviral treatment. I later joined medical school, where medical and paediatric wards were really overstretched with children and adults living with HIV. Without treatment, especially for the children, we were faced with the terrible predicament of just watching children pass on every day. Prevention of vertical transmission programmes and test-and-treat programmes, however, worked like magic! Within a very short time, the number of children in wards with AIDS melted away; soon, we could not easily find a case of cryptococcal meningitis to demonstrate to medical students. It is really satisfying working in a field where there is optimism for a better tomorrow
What are your goals as an IAS change maker?
My long-term vision is to make a key contribution to health systems strengthening in low-resource settings, especially to advance mental health and HIV care for children and adolescents. I am motivated to help bridge the gap between the high-quality research that frequently produces fantastic innovations and these products actually benefitting the people who need them. I hope to accomplish this through thoughtful application of implementation science and dissemination tools, developed or adapted to low-resource settings.