As a child, Andrew Ochieng survived the world’s second-deadliest parasitic disease. Today, he races to stop this little-known killer from the back of a motorbike.
Helmet on and medical kits secured, Ochieng crisscrosses the vast rural landscape along the Kenya-Uganda border. His mission is to thwart visceral leishmaniasis, known locally as Kala-azar—a disease few have heard of, but one Ochieng knows intimately.
“I felt so sick,” Ochieng recalls of his childhood ordeal. “Like being run over by an 18-wheeler.” When a weeks-long fever struck him at age 12, his family, unfamiliar with the illness, took him to a traditional healer, whose treatment left permanent scars.
He eventually received proper medical care, enduring 60 injections over two months.
Driven to spare others the same trauma, Ochieng now works as a community mobiliser for the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi).
From his trusty motorbike, he brings testing, knowledge, and a message of hope to remote villages, transforming his own survival into a lifeline for his community.
By James Kisoo
