David Karuri
Kenyan consultant surgeon and trauma specialist Dr. David Karuri has built a career on the idea that geography should never dictate survival odds. Trained at the University of Nairobi’s School of Medicine and refined in Aga Khan University’s surgical theatres, he set out for rural Murang’a in 2015 and performed the district’s first successful Caesarean section at Muriranjas Sub-County Hospital, an intervention that opened the maternity wing to round-the-clock obstetric care. Two years later he headed west, where he pushed Kapenguria County Referral Hospital beyond basic trauma care, leading the team that carried out West Pokot’s first brain surgery and setting up the county’s inaugural ICU, dialysis bay and CT suite.
Today Karuri splits his time between the operating table and systems design, building trauma registries that feed real-time data to ambulance crews and lobbying counties to adopt unified emergency protocols. His initiatives have cut referral times by a third and given surgeons in four remote hospitals access to specialist consults via low-bandwidth telemedicine links. Decorated with the Moran of the Order of the Burning Spear in 2021, he is now drafting a national curriculum for rural trauma surgery and piloting drone-delivered blood supplies, driving home his belief that every Kenyan theatre can be a centre of excellence.