He is driven by the fact that as a chief pharmacist, patients who visit the newest referral hospital have access to medicine.
The Alliance High School alumnus who wanted to pursue a career in law has risen through the ranks to be where he is in less than a decade after he graduated from the University of Nairobi with a Bachelor of Pharmacy and Master of Science Health Economic and Policy.
“I knew when I was coming from high school I was going to do law. But during my gap year, I interacted with pharmacists. From the interactions, I started gaining interest in their practice because it looked very challenging mentally I always liked something that can challenge me.”
One other thing that interested him was that if there was no employment, one can always start their retail.
"“I knew when I was coming from high school I was going to do law. But during my gap year, I interacted with pharmacists. From the interactions, I started gaining interest in their practice because it looked very challenging mentally I always liked something that can challenge me.”"
The father of three started his career at Nyahururu district hospital and later transferred to Thika level 5 hospital where he practiced as a pharmacist for two years.
In 2010 after the devolution, he was tapped in to be among the sub-county pharmacist in Thika. Two years later he would rise to be the deputy county pharmacist in Kiambu.
In early 2019, after the change of governors he went to work at Ruiru sub-county hospital and the following year President Uhuru Kenyatta gazetted the Kenyatta University Teaching Referral and Research Hospital. In May, he was among a group of consultants who were tapped in to come in and help operationalise the hospital.
“Our task was very easy, this hospital had to open. We came, the hospital was brand new nothing had been done, so it was to set up policies, setting up requirements that needed to be done.”
He was recruited as a senior pharmacist in late 2019 and in 2020 he was picked to act as the head of the department of pharmacy.
His joy comes when in the evening a patient in ICU who needed a special drug and was able to source it and he sees the patient going home satisfied, he says it makes him feel good.
Away from the office, he loves to travel. He also does some CSR with his work mostly geared towards the boy child. “We visit mostly boys high schools to talk to them about career opportunities and guiding them. The problem we have is that the boy child has been neglected.”
His advice to his age mates is that all of us have something in us and that something is needed by someone else. “I need to use what I have to make someone else’s life better.”
Hilary Kimuyu