Bill’s story is an extraordinary one. He had had the ambition of becoming a doctor from the age of six and was nicknamed Dr Robert by his school friends. In 2001 he had passed his secondary certificate of education and earned himself a place at the University of Nairobi for a degree course leading to a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery. He had hoped to obtain a scholarship for the course, but his grades suffered due to his class attendance being disrupted by his father’s inability to pay the fees on time. His father had been out of work due to ill health. This remarkable young man managed to juggle his studies while caring for his family and still obtained exemplary marks. For the first few years of his five year medical degree Bill was initially sponsored by Baroness Chalker. His course fees were sponsored by the Foundation when it was established in 2005. Since graduating in 2007 Bill has excelled. He worked at the Kitale District Hospital and was singled out for promotion by the Kenya Public Service Commission in 2009 to the role of Turkana District Medical Officer where his work is focused on disease control.
In 2007, the Chalker Foundation took the decision to sponsor a medical student called Vicent Bakyenga from Uganda. Vicent was a medical student at Kigezi International School of Medicine based in the UK. He was chosen as one of only two scholarship students from Uganda. Unfortunately halfway through his studies the Medical School closed down and Vicent was left unable to complete his medical degree. He was accepted by the Medical University of Lodz in Poland. On the recommendation of one of the advisers to the Foundation, Professor Peter Abrahams, the Foundation agreed to give Vicent financial support.
Vicent’s ambition is to become a neurosurgeon. He recalls that when he was young he saw a man come into a health clinic he was volunteering in with head injuries who was allowed to bleed to death and was told that there was no point in taking him to a hospital because there were no neurosurgeons to treat him. There are still thousands of tragedies such as this every day.
“In my view, Africa has always been 'playing catch up' in many areas for a long time. Governments and development partners are now starting to invest in infrastructure and making drugs available to all thanks to the Millennium Development Goal targets. However the emphasis must remain in greater investment in training highly qualified health workers if the African health care system is to rise up to the task of providing quality health care for all and essentially saving lives” – Dr Vicent Bakyenga
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Since February this year with the outbreak of wild polio virus in the neighbouring Sudan, we have been doing polio campaigns in conjunction with W.H.O and UNICEF and as we are speaking we have been able to tame the transmission with only 17 cases affected from our district.
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Dr Robert Ngabo (August 09)
