When Dr. Bernard Olayo started his career at a public hospital in western Kenya’s Homa Bay there were two things he could be certain to happen every day during the rainy season.
“You are sure that the power will go out — and that you will get children with pneumonia. They came in large numbers,” he said.
His hospital served communities living on 16 islands in Lake Victoria, with parents braving the cold, wet weather to travel by boat to the mainland to seek care for their babies, whose needs often included medical oxygen.