By F. Bruce Cohen
Chief Financial Officer, United Therapies
Co-Founder, Knock Foundation, Inc.
(Previous post: How Knock Foundation Partnered with United Urology Centers on Development Work in Africa)
The logistics in arranging such a trip are daunting; in short, we had to (among other things) (i) find a hospital willing to put up with us, (ii) pick dates and help arrange air, hotel and ground transport in a country half a world away, (iii) solicit physician volunteers and inform them as to the details of the trip and what they could expect (which we ourselves did not really know), (iv) get them licensed in Kenya, (v) collect and ship supplies ahead of time, and (vi) ensure that their time on the ground would be well spent.
Assisting me in these efforts (actually, she did much of the work and I mostly assisted her by pestering her with emails), was Beldina Opiyo-Omolo, the MCI Public Health Specialist in Kisumu, Kenya. To say that Beldina is an absolute force of nature is a gross understatement. Without her efforts and her dynamic personality, it’s hard to imagine this trip ever getting off the ground.
After spending two weeks with her, I’m more convinced than ever that she is the future of Kenya and could change the face of that country singlehandedly. As I did, those to that know her respect her intellect, drive and ability and, as a result, take the mission of MCI very seriously.
I arrived in Kisumu, Kenya on Monday, April 19, fewer than 24 hours after I was originally supposed to arrive and a full six days before the first two of my five doctors eventually arrived. This was not as originally planned but Eyjafjallajökull put months of painstaking planning in jeopardy and required creative thinking by me, the five doctor volunteers, our travel agent Sherry Widman, Beldina, and the administration of Nyanza Provincial General Hospital (NPGH) in Kisumu.
Eventually, three of the doctors made it but the trip was cut short to one week rather than the originally planned two.
[...] Development in Kenya: A First-Person Account [...]