City MD honoured for work in Africa
Dr. Don Kilby, an Ottawa physician, was awarded the prestigious Nelson Mandela Humanitarian Award at the 2014 Planet Africa Awards Gala in Toronto recently.
Kilby was recognized for his work as co-founder and president of the non-profit Canada-Africa Community Health Alliance (CACHA). A volunteer-driven, donor-supported organization, CACHA aims to improve community health and access to quality care in underserved rural African communities.
Through his work with CACHA, founded in 2001, and his own countless trips abroad, Kilby has touched thousands of lives in Tanzania, Uganda, Benin and Gabon.
The Planet Africa awards recognize deserving individuals or organizations that make a profound difference in society, at the national and international levels. Past recipients include Prof. Wole Soyinka, Nobel Laureate; the Hon. Jean Augustine, Ontario’s first fairness commissioner and a former federal cabinet minister; Daniel Igali, Olympic gold medallist; as well as corporate executives and entertainers. Planet Africa is a cultural and advocacy group based in Toronto.
Kilby’s work at home and abroad were cited in his award.
The medical director of University of Ottawa Health Services and founder of the Ottawa HIV Primary Care Group has been a longtime advocate for access to health care for marginalized populations. A highly recognized expert in the subject of HIV/AIDS, he has chaired many advisory committees, including the federal ministerial council on HIV/AIDS and the Ontario advisory committee on HIV/AIDS. In 2006, he received the Ontario Award for Good Citizenship.
Under his leadership, CACHA has sent volunteers on medical missions for the past 13 years, consisting of teams of about 15 to 25 Canadian volunteers including surgeons, physicians, nurses, pharmacists, dentists, ophthalmologists, other health workers and logisticians (non-medical volunteers).
Word spreads quickly in these rural communities that the Canadians are back. In the lineups for medical care, Kilby sees an opportunity to provide future training in safe sanitary and health practices.
CACHA also provides ongoing support for hundreds of orphans and vulnerable children in Benin and Tanzania, providing food, clothing, medical care, school fees and more. Visit one of these communities and you will be sure to see local children wearing donated clothes with NHL logos. CACHA has done extensive work in providing, and training local practitioners in, maternal and infant health care.
Since 2001, CACHA has treated more than 200,000 patients, supported more than 900 orphans and vulnerable children and donated more than $7.5 million in medical and other supplies.
CACHA has achieved all this as an organization run and funded through grassroots efforts; the dedicated volunteers on medical missions pay their own way. With this experience, Kilby believes that, “Each and every one of us, in our own way, can do something to ensure that there is a more equitable distribution of opportunity of education, of food, of clean water, of health and of wealth.”
While providing direct medical care to underserved communities, CACHA seeks to sustainably improve the long-term determinants of community health. Working with local partners, including NGOs, hospitals, churches, schools, regional health officers and local village leaders, CACHA programs have helped support women’s rights, income security, housing and food security, as well as education, and access to clean water and sanitation.
In addition to the programs mentioned above, examples of CACHA’s work include supporting the Imani Vocational Training Centre in Northern Tanzania, and an ambitious boys and girls club in Kamengo, Uganda. CACHA has also partnered with the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development (formerly CIDA) for the Improving Maternal and Infant Care project in Ukerewe, Tanzania, a critical capacity building project designed to improve knowledge and practise of safe delivery and referral for antenatal care, delivery and postnatal care, as well as newborn care.
All of it beginning with Don Kilby’s vision.
Dr. Kilby expresses his philosophy this way: “The hopes of nations rest in the hands of ordinary people trying to accomplish extraordinary things.”