Sister Of Local Priests Builds Kenyan Health Network

By GRETCHEN KEISER, Staff Writer

Published: September 4, 2003

CONYERS—While two of her brothers are priests in Georgia, Eileen Kieran Willson has put her Catholic faith into practice in Kenya, where she has lived for the past 25 years.

Going to the East African nation in 1977, as a volunteer with the Irish equivalent of the Peace Corps, she has remained long after that two-year commitment ended, marrying, settling in the beautiful country and continuing to serve. Most recently, she has been developing a health care network in the district where she lives.

On a summer visit to the archdiocese, the Irish native from County Louth described the place that has become her home.

“Kenya is a vast land of 74 different tribes with74 different cultures,” she said. Known for its breathtaking landscapes and wildlife, which attract North Americans and Europeans for safari and beach vacations, it is also a place of simplicity and need.

“There is a beautiful beach and tourist area right where I live” in the Kwale district, Willson said. “Right behind it is terrible poverty.”

She is the coordinator of the Kwale Health Forum, which she runs out of her home, relying on providence and the contributions of organizations that are forum members and the Kenyan government. She said that malaria is the greatest health problem for Kenyans.

“Malaria is our worst (health problem) still, after so many hundreds of years,” she said. “People live with it every day and they tend not to be cured completely. We are trying to improve the knowledge of what you should do, so the community themselves can manage malaria better.”

Despite its international notoriety, AIDS is not the top health concern in Kenya, although still present.

After malaria, “one of our biggest problems is infant mortality, through mothers’ lack of knowledge of (childbirth) complications,” Willson said. Many babies are born at home without medical care. “We have a very big campaign of mother and child (health) awareness.”

The Kwale Health Forum is trying to improve facilities at 74 government health clinics in the district and to improve the morale of government health professionals, many of whom work alone at clinics in the bush without electricity and with no access to medical consultation.

Through the forum, efforts are being made to connect the 74 clinics by radio to one another or to connect individual clinics with the Internet via radio, so staff can get medical information or consult about cases they encounter in the bush.

The forum also organizes health action days, where they mobilize groups to go to one area and bring, for example, dental treatment or eye care or immunizations for children under 5.

The Kwale district is in the southeastern section of Kenya, stretching from the coast on the Indian Ocean back into the bush.

“There is a great contrast in the district,” Willson said. “The coast is very westernized, a 16-kilometer strip of beautiful beaches with about 14 or 15 major hotels, beautiful hotels, four or five-star hotels. Then there is a little strip of hills. Behind that you have total poverty, no electricity, no road infrastructure, other than dirt tracks.”

The bush is clay scrubland, “very unfriendly” to agriculture, where people principally eat cassava, a potato-like tuber.

Kenya has an unusual profile for Africa, as it is a predominantly Christian country and has had a stable government for over 40 years. But terrorists struck a devastating blow in the last few years by bombing an embassy in Nairobi and attempting to shoot down an Israeli civilian aircraft. Overnight, Kenya’s flourishing tourist trade with the West, which is vital to the economy of the country, shut down, Willson said. “All our charters, all our tourists, pulled out overnight.”

Although the Kenyan tourist department has worked extensively to draw people back, the country is “in the wrong place at the wrong time,” she said, overshadowed by the worldwide threat of terrorism.

Her husband, a hotel manager, recently had to lay off 150 staff. In the economic circumstances in Kenya, “each one of them has probably been designated to feed about 12 mouths, so you’re influencing a lot of people,” she said somberly.

The sister of Father John and Father Richard Kieran, and one of eight children, Willson went to Kenya 25 years ago as an Irish volunteer to care for children with polio and teach life skills to girls. While there she met her husband, James, who had been raised in Kenya, and as they moved around the country for his work and raised their daughter, she continued to be active in development.

In the 1990s she worked to establish an eye clinic on the south coast. That experience led her to realize there was a duplication of services among various groups, which inhibited the most effective use of limited health care funds and resources.

“We started to network different organizations involved in eye care,” she said. This led to the concept of the health forum to “bring together all aspects of health services, particularly preventive health.”

The forum is built upon community and government involvement. In addition to bringing basic health care into all areas of the district, they help with more serious cases.

During a health action day, they always encounter people with serious health needs who have no resources and no access to medical facilities and doctors, Willson said. “We link needy cases with organizations that do things . . . In the field, they may not know there are organizations to help.”

On a recent health action day, UNICEF was the host organization and the event was held in schools, focusing on immunizations, nutrition and eye care. People walked in from a radius of about 20 kilometers. The goal is to have one health action day a month.

“We are discovering it is better to do small numbers well,” she said. “You will inevitably find children with multiple sclerosis or heart problems or any of the major problems” and the critical follow-up with those cases is long range and time-consuming.

Recently they were able to begin computerizing health data. “We now know basically what problems we have,” Willson said, which is key to planning.

Although recently her work lost a key source of funding because the Irish government disbanded a support program, she is persevering and trusting in God. “You can’t step off the bandwagon. You’re a development person,” she said.

The eye clinic she and others started has grown from four people to 44 employees, including one ophthalmologist. They are now doing 1,000 cataract surgeries a year, 20 a day, in an area that once had no eye care at all.

The Kwale Health Forum has been asked to give a presentation on health networking at a major AIDS conference being held in Nairobi in September. The work they’ve done is also serving as a model for other districts in Kenya. The health forum is able to do a lot with a little, she said. “I think the world health figure is $12 a head to affect basic care in a developing country. Our figure is $2.” Willson said it is very fulfilling to her to see what is coming about, even as she hopes for better economic times in Kenya and an end to the specter of terrorism and war.

“Here I am, an Irish national, now having the joy of seeing government officials and the private sector coming together under this banner to affect change for health,” she said. Like all things involving faith, to see good come about, “it is down to trust.”

Willson, who stayed at St. Pius X Church, Conyers, where Father John Kieran is the pastor, expressed her profound gratitude to the people of the Archdiocese of Atlanta, who always extend hospitality to her, and who have surrounded her brothers with love, especially in caring for Father Richard Kieran, who has been in rehabilitative care since he experienced a brain hemorrhage in 1999.

“You come back here and you get such a wonderful welcome. People are so genuinely kind. I’ve been driven around the Archdiocese of Atlanta. I’ve been dined. Nothing is too much,” she said, gratefully.

“Weren’t we such a lucky family Msgr. P.J. O’Connor did find us and bring us to this Archdiocese of Atlanta,” she said, alluding to the priest who, decades ago, recruited many Irish seminarians, including her brothers, to serve in North Georgia by his personal warmth, zeal and charisma.

“If all this had to happen,” she said of her brother’s illness, “we are blessed it happened in the Archdiocese of Atlanta.”

Those interested in assisting Eileen Willson and the Kwale Health Forum in Kenya may contact Father John Kieran at (770) 483-3660.