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Brothers' Dedication Subject of New Documentary
"Sons of Lwala" celebrates Kenya clinic, VUSM's Milton and Fred Ochieng'

One rainy evening 10 years ago Patricia Opiyo, a pregnant woman from the remote village of Lwala, Kenya, went into labor with a breech birth.

"Her relatives put her in a wheelbarrow and pushed her to get to the main road to flag a ride to the hospital 40 kilometers away," recalls Milton Ochieng', a fourth-year Vanderbilt medical student and who was a teenager at the time, "but she hemorrhaged to death before they reached the highway." Unfortunately, the unborn baby died too.

That incident is one of the reasons Milton and his brothers, Fred and Maurice, who grew up in Lwala, have since toiled to fulfill their father's dream of building a local health facility. On April 2, 2007, that dream came true with the opening of the Lwala Community Health Clinic.

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The Emphasis Program is a unique mode of self-directed study which takes place during the first two years of medical school. This program aims to harness the student's skills, talents, and passions by allowing them to pursue a project of their choosing.

Perhaps one of the greatest advantages of the Emphasis Program is the opportunity for students to learn more about themselves and what type of physicians they would like to become.