July 6, 2009, ST. LOUIS - Milton Ochieng’, MD, Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine resident, is part of elite company as winner of the 2009 Trailblazer in Diversity Award from the Johnnetta B. Cole Global Diversity & Inclusion Institute.

Previous winners of the award include Dr. Maya Angelou, actor and activist Danny Glover and BET founder Sheila Johnson. To be in such company isn’t surprising, considering Dr. Ochieng’s childhood story.

Dr. Ochieng’ was the first person in his Kenyan village to be accepted to an American university. His fellow villagers sold chickens and goats to raise $900 in airfare for him to attend Dartmouth College on a scholarship.

Never forgetting where he came from, he worked with his brother Fred to open a medical clinic in the village. To the average American that might not sound impressive, but in Kenya, such medical help is rare. His village has no electricity or running water.

“You’d either have to get the person on the back of a bicycle or in a wheelbarrow if they’re bleeding and literally push them on the wheelbarrow for 45 minutes or an hour to get to the nearest paved road - then flag down a taxi,” says Dr. Ochieng’. “Sometimes, it would take two hours to get to the hospital.”

He remembers seeing a woman on such a trip who died during childbirth on the journey. “They had to push her back in this bloody wheelbarrow,” says Dr. Ochieng’. “And I just remember the eerie cries of the women as her body was being brought back.”

While Melvin Blanchard, MD, director of the WUSM internal medicine residency program was integral in recruiting Dr. Ochieng to Barnes-Jewish Hospital, Ochieng’ credits seeing that woman in the wheelbarrow to help him decide to become a physician. From Dartmouth, he attended medical school at Vanderbilt University – where his brother Fred currently studies – before moving to St. Louis and Barnes-Jewish as a medical resident. All the while, the two brothers worked together to create the clinic by raising money in the United States.

Although the clinic opened in April 2007, and has seen more than 32,000 patients – 65 percent of them under age 5 – his parents did not live to see their children’s work come to fruition, both dying of AIDS several years ago.

Efforts to build the clinic were chronicled in the award-winning documentary “Sons of Lwala” and earned Fred and Dr. Ochieng’ honors as ABC News’ “Persons of the Week” in early 2009. To find out more about Ochieng’s work visit www.sonsoflwala.com or see him speak 11 a.m.-1 p.m., July 17 in the Clopton Auditorium.