Once on track for a career in Kenya’s military, Dr. Alfred Ochola soon found his way back to his true calling: finding community-based solutions to improve young lives

As a college student in Kisumu, Kenya, Alfred Ochola was a standout athlete: captain of the volleyball team, goalie for the soccer team, and leading scorer for the basketball team. It was the military that first took special notice of his abilities, but it was an observation by Alfred’s father that would change the direction of his life.

Military officials recruited Alfred after watching him excel at several sporting matches. Though Alfred had already begun his studies in medicine, he readily accepted admittance into the forces, impressed by all that they were willing to offer him. But during the second week of military boot camp, Alfred’s father paid him a visit. “I have other sons who should join the army, but not you,” his father told him. “Your heart is with the patients, and that is where you belong.”

“It hurts me, because diarrhea is controllable. It is preventable.”

Alfred’s family and friends had always recognized his sensitivity and compassion toward other people, and those traits inspired his parents to pray for Alfred to stay in medicine. His father’s message resonated in Alfred’s sensitive heart. Two days later, he asked to be dismissed from the army and return to medical school, specializing in pediatrics.

Tackling a leading childhood killer

Nearly four decades later, Alfred is the primary health care coordinator in PATH’s Kenya country program.  He leads an initiative to control diarrheal disease in the country’s Western Province, while also working closely with the government and partners in Nairobi to ensure that supportive national policies are in place for diarrheal disease control. His passion is preventing and treating diarrhea in children, who are especially susceptible to the illness. Diarrheal disease is the second leading childhood killer in the country and in Bungoma District, where his work is focused.

“It hurts me,” Alfred says of the disease’s prevalence, “because diarrhea is controllable. It is preventable.”

In a society where children are often overlooked, even by members of their own community, Alfred gives voice and dignity to the little lives who are the end beneficiaries of his work. It’s clear that they are his top priority. While leading a group of visitors through a rural hospital, for example, Alfred leaves his guests to gently examine a tiny, dehydrated child. While engaging community members in a discussion about hygiene and sanitation, Alfred points to the boys and girls standing on the fringes of the group. “No one invited the children to this meeting,” he says. “But they are my agenda.”

“Everybody has something to offer”

With six children of his own—in addition to two exchange students whom he also affectionately calls “daughters”—Alfred is intimately aware of diarrhea’s severe effects when treatment is not readily available, and of the pain parents can feel when their children are suffering. He is passionate about the work that PATH is doing to protect families from diarrheal disease by putting solutions in the hands of the people.

In one community in Bungoma District, where PATH is helping residents establish a clean water supply to reduce the risk of diarrhea, Alfred assures the community that they already have 90 percent of what they need to cover a well or natural spring: bricks, sand, and stone. PATH just needs to provide a little technical support. “There is nobody who has nothing,” Alfred asserts. “Everybody has something to offer, and that which they have to offer should be stimulated by technology, and that is the strength of PATH.”

Alfred says that giving children the chance at a healthy life gives him more satisfaction than any amount of money. And he smiles when he thinks about the fateful moment when his father steered him back to his calling.

“It is now 37 years ago since I left the military,” he says, “and I have no regrets at all.”

Photos, from top: PATH/Hope Randall, PATH.