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Dr Kanyoro was driven to help very sick children

Compassionate physician who never gave up; her hope and smile were infectious.

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by GORDON OSEN AND JOSEPHAT IRUNGU

News17 June 2021 - 16:16
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In Summary


• Dr Kanyoro or Baby Doc worked in the emergency department and the ICU.

• Her friends describe her as stylish, humorous, honest to a fault, an advocate of humanity and unyielding champion of what she believed in. 

Dr Lydia Wahura Kanyoro who committed suicide in her car at KNH on June 12.

To family and friends, she was known fondly as Baby Doc.

Dr Lydia Kanyoro was a compassionate physician who specialised in treating very sick children. Some recovered and smiled again, some she couldn't save.

She worked both in the emergency department and the ICU section.

Kanyoro never gave up on a task she was determined to accomplish, she was infectious in her hope and dissolved life's pressures with her unfading smile.

That's what a colleague at MP Shah Hospital told her funeral service on Thursday.

The colleague who worked with her in the ICU recalled that a child she was treating had just died, and she went to the sobbing mother and comforted her. She rubbed her back and murmured to her.

Baby Doc showed compassion though she herself was exhausted, having worked for many hours in the night.

"That's Lydia. She put the feeling of her patients first. She told me she was just troubled by what could be going on in the mind of the grieving mother," the colleague said.

Kanyoro died last Saturday after injecting herself with powerful anaesthetic drugs.

Her body was recovered in the back of her car in the parking lot of Kenyatta National Hospital, where she was attending a postgraduate class.

She will be buried this Saturday at her father's home in Iguriini Kianyaga village, Murkwe-ini constituency, Nyeri county.

Her friends describe her as stylish, humorous and honest to a fault. She was an advocate of humanity and a relentless champion of what she believed in.

She often wore boots, long earrings, perfect makeup and stylish clothes.

Her friends and colleagues also said she was always widely read and could have an informed discussion on any happening, be it politics, religion, social life. She could discuss any book and critique any movie.

Another colleague described how closely she followed the 2020 US presidential election cycle. She often made fun of how biased the western media would be if it were happening in Africa.

Lydia was a family role model who inspired her siblings and cousins to work hard in school to achieve their dreams.

She went to Precious Blood Riruta High School, then studied medicine at the University of Nairobi's Chiromo campus and later went to the University of Pretoria in South Africa for specialised studies.

Lydia was eulogised as a God-fearing woman who accepted Jesus as her Lord and friend.

(Edited by V. Graham)

 


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