Professor Sylvester Kimaiyo
AMPATH Executive Director, CARE
Professor Sylvester Kimaiyo is executive director of care programs for the Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare (AMPATH) and Chief of Party of the USAID-funded AMPATH Uzima program. AMPATH is a 35-year partnership between Moi University and Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH) in Eldoret, Kenya, and a consortium of 16 leading universities around the world led by Indiana University. Professor Kimaiyo is also professor of internal medicine at Moi University and a consultant and physician at MTRH.
His passion for medicine began while volunteering for the Red Cross from 1977 to 1978 and staffing a school dispensary in Turkana County in 1979. He realized making a difference in people's lives by caring for them and helping his community lead healthy lives is very fulfilling. This nudged him to enroll for medical school the following year.
He graduated from medical school at the University of Nairobi in 1985 and became Moi University School of Medicine’s first internal medicine lecturer in 1995. Professor Kimaiyo travelled to Indiana University (IU) in 2000 for a two-year fellowship in clinical pharmacology. While at IU, Professor Kimaiyo had the opportunity to learn from Dr. Joe Wheat who was a leader in HIV care and who also provided the funds to treat the first Kenyan patients living with HIV. When he returned to Kenya, Professor Kimaiyo became the Kenyan leader of the growing AMPATH HIV care and control effort. Some of the patients who had been expected to succumb to HIV while he was in the U.S. instead became the first patients to receive antiretroviral therapy (ART) and made miraculous recoveries. Professor Kimaiyo has been involved in all aspects of the AMPATH partnership for more than 22 years.
AMPATH’s HIV programs currently provide care for more than 120,000 people living with HIV in 9 counties in western Kenya and the AMPATH Centre at MTRH which he leads is one of the first and largest single HIV clinics in Africa. Additionally, the foundation created by the HIV program is now being used to build a comprehensive model of population health inclusive of care for chronic diseases and the availability of universal health insurance. Professor Kimaiyo is a leader in efforts to create sustainable health systems at the county level throughout western Kenya.
Professor Kimaiyo believes that "part of the job description of any AMPATH physician, regardless of their other roles, is to see patients." The desire to help his community that led him to enroll in medical school has led to a life and career of helping people in underserved communities across Kenya and around the world.