A Kenyan doctor has become an item of amazement in Germany for his impressive skills in the medical field.
Born in Molo, Nakuru County, Dr Anguche Amukobole has risen to the second-highest level in the medical hierarchy in Germany.
At 40, he is a husband, father of two daughters and considered a genius by his colleagues. Dr Anguche is the head of the Pulmonary Critical Care Unit in Saxony Anhalt, Germany.
“I lead a team of doctors in an intensive care unit specialising in ventilator weaning. Here, we attend to patients put on machine-assisted breathing after a major surgery or illness. This is a very specialised operation and it costs the patients over Ksh300,000 per day,” he explained to The Nation.
He also wears the hat of a don as he teaches medical graduates working towards specialising in respiratory medicine, and also medical school students in Otto von Guericke University.
The celebrated medic is also a multi-lingual fellow being fluent in Luhya, Kikuyu, Swahili, English, German and French.
Dr Anguche, who is equally a licensed private pilot, narrated his humble background.
“I was born to a very poor family. My father was a storekeeper at Molo Academy and his earnings were barely enough to sustain us,” he recalled.
However, he does not consider himself a genius as many claim. He believes he just made the best of the opportunities he got in school. He studied in a prestigious academy alongside students from well-off families owing to the fact that his father was a staff in the institution.
“To me, reading was an escape when life became unbearable. Unlike the owners of the books, I devoured every book I came across. Getting lost in the books was my remedy for the biting poverty at home,” he divulged.
He scored 619 out of 700 marks in his KCPE in 1993, earning him a slot in the top 20 students in the country.
Consequently, he got a place at Starehe Boys Centre and after Form Four, he joined the University of Nairobi to study medicine. Having passed his KCSE exams, he also got a scholarship to study a National Diploma in Computer Science.
He depended on HELB to finance his studies and saved some little cash to enrol for French lessons. He cleared from campus with three certifications.
Losing patients that he could have saved with better resources made him quit working as a government doctor in Kenya.
“When I was working at the Kapenguria District Hospital, I lost a 19-year-old girl who developed complications when she was delivering. I had the knowledge and skills to save her, but we did not have the required facilities. That still haunts me to date. I decided I was not going to wear a white lab coat and oversee the deaths of Kenyans who I had the skills to save. I thus quit my job,” he painfully recounted.
An opportunity to work in Germany surfaced after he had privately practised at Pandya Memorial Hospital in Mombasa for one and a half years. He took up the chance and has never regretted the decision.
He debunks the ideology that Western countries poach brilliant minds, but rather, people on their own make the decision to settle for a quiet life and use their intellectual abilities to benefit their families.
Anguche hopes to keep improving his medical gambit until he cannot do it anymore.
