This greatly impoverished health care system has cost so many lives in communities such as Peter's. Parents have lost innumerable children to curable diseases. Adults, too, perish needlessly. This has led to a cycle of misery, ultimately leaving Africa's children without leaders to encourage and support them in their studies so that a solution can be found.
This is the situation in Africa. Precious lives have been and continue to be lost. If medicine can open its doors to Peter's homeland lives will be saved. Healthy communities will be raised. As Peter says, "a community without health care professionals is a dying one."
This is why advancing the goals of diversity and improving health care to underserved populations lies at the heart of Peter Kithene's world. The health care system in his homeland is appallingly underserved, and as an orphan from a rural village, he knows firsthand what the disparity in health care does to people.
In Africa, nearly all hospitals are located in cities; countless rural communities throughout the land have no place to bring their sick and no doctors to see them. City hospitals are simply too expensive for ordinary people (in a nation of "ordinary people") to even travel to, and should they manage that, hospitals' services are prohibitively expensive. The result is few rural people can avail themselves of "available" help.
This unbalanced dispersal of medicine is due primarily to the fact that the educated of African countries prefer to live in the cities. This creates an intra-country brain drain: people born and raised in cities enjoy the perks of city life and, for the most part, forget that there are other lives outside the city in desperate need of help. Due to lack of opportunity and funds, people in these rural areas do not get the chance to leave to study things like medicine so they can go back to make the changes so urgently needed. Peter's greatest desire is to create awareness of the suffering of these rural communities. He goal is to continue to build and run hospitals, health centers, clinics, and community programs after he completes his medical training.
Peter is a proud child of Africa. His mother and father were of differing tribes with a history of hostility between them. As the son of two tribes Peter learned that humanity binds us all, regardless of tribe, race, or physical disability. He found a home in both his father's and his mother's tribes, and everywhere he went people welcomed him for who he was as an individual. A respect Peter feels we all deserve.
Peter has personally known the trials due to the lack of health care. They lead beyond the physical symptoms of pain and suffering and death. Orphans in his homeland are expected to drop out of school and work to take care of their family, regardless of their age or level of education. Peter was pained as he watched his family and friends suffer back home; as deaths in his village and those around it continue unabated. It used to be in Muhuru Bay that patients who could make it to the nearest clinic were simply told to rest in the ward for the day. By evening they were told to go back home and then return if their symptoms persisted. By the time they were brought back, however, their symptoms were often beyond treatment and they would die.
Now, with the presence of Mama Maria, this is no longer the case. Peter's admission into the medical profession will serve as a living testimony to rural Africans. His story has and will continue to spread throughout the villages of Lake Victoria, inspiring other youth like him. His life experiences have molded his understanding that all human beings - regardless of background - just need a chance.
Which is exactly what Mama Maria provides.