AMPATH—The Good Will Remains Seamless

One could tell the story of AMPATH as if it were a seamless path toward success. The Indiana University partnership with our Kenyan colleagues gave birth to a second medical school for Kenya, the Moi University School of Medicine. This was rapidly followed by an expanding AMPATH consortium of North American Universities joining both Moi University and Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital to lead one of the world’s largest and most successful responses to the HIV pandemic that threatened the very survival of many developing countries. This dynamic care program stayed faithful to its mission to serve as a platform for research and teaching. As a result, a whole new generation of Kenyan and North American students and residents are beginning to shape the future of healthcare on both continents.

It was inevitable that two bold moves would be seen as natural next steps. The first was for our Kenyan partners to lead in transforming a comprehensive HIV program into a robust model of population health providing enhanced Ministry of Health services from village to tertiary hospital combined with universal health insurance for the poor. The second is demonstrating the possibility of replicating the AMPATH model of international collaboration, as we are now poised to do.

Professor Joe Mamlin

Those who have followed AMPATH carefully know well that the journey itself has never been “seamless.” Many events over the years have threatened to knock us off the path including acts of terrorism and post-election conflicts.

Each of these episodes resulted in varying degrees of evacuation of faculty and suspension of North American student rotations that lasted for months. But in each instance the program bounced back with renewed vigor and determination.

Now the AMPATH consortium and its Kenyan partners face another interruption, and for the first time is not due to a “crisis” in Kenya. The COVID-19 pandemic represents an unparalleled challenge for the world at large. We have been forced to repatriate most North American full-time staff from Kenya and once again stop all exchange of students and residents. Yet not a day goes by when our North American partners are not in contact with their Kenyan counterparts as they seek every possible path toward being helpful as Kenya faces enormous challenges in the weeks and months ahead.

One thing is for sure, this crisis will pass and the AMPATH Kenya collaboration will move forward stronger than ever. It is hard to imagine any crisis that could underscore more powerfully the need to rush toward a Kenyan MOH care network capable of providing comprehensive care while protecting the poor with universal health insurance.

Yes, there have been major interruptions over the thirty year course of the AMPATH Kenya partnership---and there will certainly be other interruptions in the years ahead. At first glance, it would appear that the AMPATH collaboration has been anything but “seamless.”

I would argue that what is truly seamless about the AMPATH journey is the vision at the very heart of the collaboration. It is that vision that led AMPATH to become the first university collaboration in history to demand that “care leads the way.”  The underlying “will to do what is good” represents an anchor within AMPATH that cannot be interrupted or defeated by terrorism, civil war, or novel pandemics.

It was said best by Immanuel Kant in 1785, “A good will is good not because of what it effects, or accomplishes but good just by its willing, even if, by some particular disfavor of fate, this will should entirely lack the capacity to carry through its purpose and only the good will were to remain.  Then, like a jewel, it will still shine, as something that has full worth in itself."

—Joe Mamlin