Lwala Community Alliance Founders, Doctors Milton and Fred Ochieng’
The Lwala Community Alliance was founded by Kenyan brothers Milton and Fred Ochieng’, who are natives of Lwala a rural village in Western Kenya. Milton and Fred lost their parents to HIV while in college in the U.S. and took this as a call to action to provide access to primary care in their community. During medical school at Vanderbilt, the brothers did all they could to raise the funds to start a clinic back at home. Their story is the subject of the documentary “Sons of Lwala” and has been featured on ABC World News and CNN.
In April 2007, after 3 years of fundraising, the Lwala Community Health Center finally opened. Through a staff of more than 25 Kenyans, we treat an average of 1,700 patients each month. Over time the program has become more multi-dimensional to include small scale micro-enterprise, public health outreach, water and sanitation, and education programming. In April 2011, we expanded the space of the health center with the addition of a maternity and integrative care wing and are now designated as the Lwala Community Hospital.
