Miriam Were was born in 1940, and she graduated from William Penn College with a degree in Biology, Chemistry and Physics when she was 24. From there, however, she decided to attend Makerere and get a Postgraduate Diploma in Education. While studying she became a published author of fiction and started writing poetry. After teaching for two years she got frustrated by the number of students in her classes who would fall sick and decided the best way to be part of the solution was to go back to school and get a degree in medicine. So in 1973, thirteen years after she enrolled for her first degree she graduated for the third time – now as a doctor. Miriam is, in herself, a potpourri of interests and skill-sets.
All these multiple tracks of learning served her well when she joined the University of Nairobi’s Department of Community Health within the Faculty of Medicine. It was like Miriam had finally found her path because using science and education to promote health became her life-long calling. She was the type of doctor who was most likely to be found tramping about in gumboots carrying out TB investigations in villages. She did go back to school once again (no surprise!) and was awarded a master’s in public health and a doctorate in 1981.
Looking back – the investment in almost twenty years of tertiary learning paid off in spades, not just for her, but for thousands. Miriam became a fearless advocate of public health in Kenya, Africa and beyond. While clinical practice is about treating one patient at a time, public health is about large scale interventions that change the perceptions of how people act about their health. It is everything from teaching children the importance of hand-washing to normalizing the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV. Miriam Were was the founder chairperson of the Public Health Association of Kenya in 1982 and has had a hand in almost every major public health initiative in Kenya since. It wasn’t always easy, but she got woke a long time before it became popular to have a contrarian view. She has served on national primary health care committees, and when HIV was declared a national emergency in Kenya in the late nineties she was called on to chair the National AIDS Control Council.
One idea has always been central throughout her work – that health cannot be achieved without communities at the forefront. It is a mantra she has sung far and wide and, thirty years later, community programmes for health and investment in community health workers to spearhead that work has finally become the norm. In 2006 Miriam Were became the first Laureate for Medical Services for the Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize. Awarded by the Japanese government in memory of Dr. Noguchi who died more than eighty years ago in the pursuit of a vaccine for Yellow Fever, the million dollar prize is awarded every five years for outstanding services in health in Africa.
With a lifetime of service to public health it is only befitting that Professor Miriam Were – doctor, poet, writer, community advocate was the first global awardee. As part of her acceptance speech with several African Heads of State in the room, she ended with the following admonishment: “May it become embarrassing for us, professionals and leaders of Africa at all levels of society who are in positions of privilege, to live lives of extravagant opulence while disease and death is rampant in our African communities”. At almost eighty years of age, other than being Chancellor of Moi University, Prof Were can still be found doing what she has always done – fighting for people’s health.
