The Lwala Community Clinic Project is the brainchild of Milton Oludhe Ochieng', a 3rd year Vanderbilt medical student and his brother Frederick Otieno Ochieng', a 1st year medical student at Vanderbilt Medical School with inspiration from their late father, Erastus Ochieng\’ who helped write the proposal for the clinic but himself passed away one month before the groundbreaking ceremony in June 2005. In the months before their death, Ochieng’s parents brought the community together to establish a village health committee, with the goal of creating a health clinic that would serve others like them who lacked access to basic health care. A committee of 21 people comprising 3 from each of the 7 clans was elected. The committee was charged with building and operating a clinic in Lwala that would serve the 4,000 residents of Kameji sub-location.

The clinic seeks to improve access to primary healthcare in a rural village in western Kenya. Milton and Fred have enlisted the help of numerous organizations in Kenya and in America, American college professors and administrators, college student groups, high school and middle school students to build a community clinic in Lwala, the rural village in Western Kenya where they grew up. The efforts of Milton and Fred represent a unique addition to the attempts by many individuals and international organizations in pursuing the UN Millenium Goals for African countries. However, Milton and Fred have the rare advantage of having first hand knowledge of the Kenyan community in which they will be putting to good use some of the western education acquired from the American institutions they attended.

For more information, please visit: mc.vanderbilt.edu/lwala

Please enjoy this fundraising site, and thank you very much for helping raise money for the Lwala Community Clinic!