MEET THE BOARD - Prof Were

Prof. Fredrick N. Were (MBCHB, CTM, MMED, FNIC, DCEH, PHD, EBS) is the Professor of Perinatal & Neonatal Medicine at the University of Nairobi, and the Chief Research Scientist at the Kenya Paediatric Research Consortium.

Prof. Were grew up in Western Kenya right at the Kenya-Uganda border. His childhood hobbies were music (was a drummer in a village band by age 11) and fishing - my home was sandwiched between River Nzoia and the Mighty Lake Victoria.

Prof. Were says his father, born in the 1890s, was self-educated and a strict Catholic, and always said that education was the most important thing a parent can give to a child. His eldest brother, Paul, who was 12 years his senior, was Were’s greatest influencer.

“One of the greatest challenges in my life, having lost my first born son, Kizito Wafula, from complications of Sickle Cell Disease, was completing my PhD in Neonatal Medicine by dissertation on long-term outcomes of Very Low Birth Infants in Kenya. There were times I really thought I wouldn’t finish,” says Were.

Prof. Were says he’s been with NNIA so long that he is part of the furniture. He says his life-changing moment was in 2002, when he realised that in order to make a sustainable, lasting impact on the lives of newborns, he had to spend less time with them in the Intensive Care Unit and more time in places where policies are conceived, developed and implemented. “NNIA is one such place.”