The Herald recently published a great story about a Mountlake Terrace man, originally from Kenya, who has opened up several health clinics in his native country. Here’s an excerpt:
“Death is a destiny. We all have to go there,” Peter Kithene said. “But I think – I know – that a lot of the suffering people go through – many babies who die, for example – is because of very treatable sickness.
“Preventable causes of death shouldn’t take peoples’ lives. And even in death, people should die with dignity. You can’t die wishing there was a hospital you could go to.”
That deeply held belief led Peter, in 2005, to his hometown of Muhuru Bay to open his first rural clinic in Kenya. On that same trip, he and Katrina married. He was just 23 years old.
Today, under the nonprofit organization Mama Maria Kenya, two clinics are in operation, although now the original is perhaps better described as a hospital.
Plans are in place to open a third clinic next year. These clinics have served about 20,000 people this year alone, offering basic ambulatory and short-term inpatient care, perinatal and maternal care, immunizations, pediatric care and emergency transport. They meet common scourges, such as malaria, typhoid and pneumonia.
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