Moi Medical Officer Matches at Duke

HYC in the News
By Dr. Peter Kussin The Duke Internal Medicine residency program welcomed Dr. Chris Mwaniki to our program in July 2020. Over the past four years, it has been my privilege to work with this exceptionally talented and passionate physician as part of my global health work at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH) in Eldoret, Kenya. Chris’ rather mundane title, “medical officer in hematology and oncology”, vastly understates the importance of his role at MTRH, which serves a catchment area of 22 million people. He was the glue which held the hematology and oncology service together and consistently made great things happen for his patients. Available 24/7, he always had a solution to even the most daunting diagnostic and treatment dilemmas. His cheerful and amazingly positive attitude was a source…
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Partnerships Aid Researchers in Nepal

Fellow highlights, HYC in the News
By Tony Pham, Global Health Pathway, Med/Psych, Nepal Seven months into my research year, high within the far-western regions of Nepal, and during a COVID-19 peak of which I had been blissfully unaware, a local community member and friend broke the inconvenient news—people were talking and everyone agreed I brought COVID-19 to their village. My research colleague and I hadn’t exhibited symptoms, but we could take a hint, and began the demoralizing descent back to the previous village, where they met us outside the border and encouraged us to continue our journey. Eventually, we found cellular coverage and, with it, new orders from our university, “return back immediately!” With a complete lock-down on our hands, we turned to our partners TPO Nepal, Duke, our Fogarty grant funders, and old familiar…
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Global Health Pathway Spotlight: LCDR Colin Smith, MD, US Public Health Service

HYC in the News
In March 2020, I was deployed to assist in standing up a federal alternative care site for patients with COVID‐19 in the Javits Convention Center in New York City (NYC). As a commissioned officer in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and fifth year Medicine‐Psychiatry resident at Duke, I felt morally obligated to respond to the call to provide clinical care to people and communities at the epicenter of our country’s crisis. Beyond that, as a Global Health Pathway (GHP) resident at the Duke Global Health Institute / Hubert‐Yeargan Center for Global Health, the call appealed to the connection that I see between local and global health disparities. During the greater than one month‐long deployment, our team cared for more than 1,000 people infected with COVID‐19. Indeed, those individuals…
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