Gail Wagner met young community organizer Daniel Ogola in Nairobi’s Kibera slum in 2003. The two discussed an audacious idea for a comprehensive community health care system in Dan’s impoverished rural home near Lake Victoria. They began with a trip of North American-based medical volunteers in 2004. In 2022, Tiba Foundation helps support outpatient clinics and a hospital that we built. It is a phenomenally successful community health worker program in the villages that is changing not only the lives of patients, but also the productivity of a community. Gail retired from her position as an oncologist at Kaiser Permanente in 2016. She describes the work she does in rural Kenya as “the most important thing I will ever do in my life.”
Gail Wagner, MD
