One of four distinguished Kenyan women who died recently was a doctor who spent herself on the welfare of AIDS victims and strengthening the African family.

In an extraordinary turn of events, four prominent Kenyan women have died during the past month. One of them, Dr Margaret Ogola, gave MercatorNet one of its first and best interviews in 2005, speaking eloquently about the top issues facing her country and the continent: poverty, AIDS, healthcare and, above all, the need to strengthen the African family.Africa needs good women leaders and it has many of them. But to lose four of its own distinguished daughters at once must be a severe blow to Kenya. They are: Virginia Wambui-Otieno, who for many years conducted a political campaign over matrimonial property law (died August 30); Professor Sophia Githinji, an educator and author (September 21); Dr Ogola, a paediatrician and healthcare administrator (September 22, at the age of only 53); and Professor Wangari Maathai, conservationist and Nobel Peace Prize winner (2004) (September 25).

These women were all staunch campaigners for their causes, but Margaret Ogola was a special kind of heroine. Many people, including a generation of Kenyan schoolchildren, have met her through her books, most famously The River and the Source, which won the 1995 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for best first book in the African region, and the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature the same year. The novel follows four generations of Kenyan women in a rapidly changing world -- a theme continued in its sequel, I Swear by Apollo.

Her third novel, Place of Destiny, which won her a second Jomo Kenyatta Prize in 2007, is semi-autobiographical, telling the story of a woman dying of cancer and the rise to recognition of a former street kid. Dr Ogola battled cancer for many years and dealt with the dirt poor in society for most of her professional life, a colleague writes.

Many of those poor were people living with AIDS. From 1994 she was the Medical Director of Cottolengo Hospice for AIDS and HIV orphans, and in 2004-2005 played a key role in establishing the SOS HIV/AIDS Clinic, serving women, men and children in Nairobi slums. At the same time she was a wife and the mother of five children (one away at university when she spoke to MercatorNet in August 2005) and to two orphans from her extended family. As she said then: “So, though I am past the age of child-bearing my family continues to grow! And that is the story of everyone in Kenya today – you have orphans that you are taking care of because they have nowhere else to turn.”

She continued writing during nights made sleepless (“I am a poor sleeper” she told us) by, no doubt, the pressing challenges of her work and a mind brimming with ambitious goals for improving life in Kenya.

As well as her medical work, Dr Ogola served in key administrative roles. From 1994 to 1998 she was Executive Director of the Family Life Counselling Association of Kenya, and from 1998 to 2002 the National Executive Secretary for Health and Family Life for the Catholic Bishops Conference, a post she held until 2002. The latter job entailed co-ordinating the administration of over 430 health care facilities run by the Catholic Church in Kenya -- representing about 20 per cent of all healthcare in Kenya. In 2002 she became she became the Kenya co-ordinator of HACI (Hope for African Children Initiative), a partnership involving CARE, Save the Children, Society for Women and AIDS, World Vision and other international NGOs.

In the international community Margaret Ogola stood out as a champion of human dignity, which she saw as belonging equally to every man, woman and child -- including the unborn child. She was no feminist in the politically correct sense that would have seen her rise with ease to a top UN post, but she was a strong advocate of the empowerment of women nevertheless.

At the UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women held at Beijing in 1995 she spoke with crystal clarity about why that was -- and is -- so necessary:

The woman is the heart of the family, and the family is the corner stone of society, therefore it is very fitting that we should be here in Beijing for the Fourth World Women's Conference seeking new ways to enhance her well being, natural talents and gifts.

The woman is a powerhouse of creativity, development and peace. Conflict between men and women is therefore unnecessary because a woman brings an equal and powerful complementarity to the common human condition. Women have been entrusted with the capacity to transmit life which is the most precious gift that any body can give or receive. Without life no other good is possible.

She attacked the sacred cows of international development organisations by insisting on “the availability of cheap and safe methods of child spacing such as Natural Family Planning”, expressing her distress “that there seems to be a conspiracy to keep women in the dark, especially the African woman, regarding the many dangerous side-effects of contraceptives”, and calling for recognition of “the irreplaceable role of parents and the family in educating and in forming children in matters of sexuality”. (She herself wrote a book to help parents with this.)