photo courtesy of Kayla Bronde Kayla Bronder works to remove jiggers from the feet of a woman at St. Camillus Hospital in Kurungu, Kenya.

Kayla Bronder: a 22-year-old from Lee’s Summit who’s working as a public health officer in rural Kenya, and is determined to eradicate jiggers and improve the lives of the people.

Bronder came home for a sister’s wedding recently and, on Feb. 18, spoke at St. Mark’s Catholic Church about her work in Kenya.

She graduated from Tulane University last spring with a degree in public health and planned to start medical school. But there was something she wanted to do first.

Growing up, she knew she wanted to be a doctor, and after a mission trip to Mexico when she was 14, Bronder knew she wanted to be a doctor in a developing country. What better way to learn some of the ropes of practicing health care in impoverished countries than by doing it? So after graduation from college she signed on as a volunteer with the Catholic Medical Mission Board, and was assigned to a 9-month stint in Africa. She has been working in St. Camillus Hospital in Kurungu, Kenya, a rural area about 40 miles from Tanzania and more than 8,000 miles from home.

More than 40 different ethnic tribes call Kenya home, she said. Many of the residents of Kurungu are Luo, one of the larger tribes. The people live in poverty, and live with HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and other health issues. Bronder said that more than 25 percent of the patients seen in the emergency room of the hospital are HIV positive; others have TB, are pregnant or have been injured in motorcycle accidents.

While working at the hospital, Bronder heard stories of a family living in abject poverty — widowed mother and two teenaged sons — who were infected with a parasite that burrowed into their feet and hands. Neighbors said the family had “jiggers;” some were certain jiggers were caused by witchcraft and it would be dangerous to remove them.

After riding her bike to visit the family, Bronder determined that the jiggers, parasitic fleas, bred in the dirt floor and roof of their hut. “The roof was partly caved in; there were just a few sticks of furniture and basic cooking utensils. Mary, the mother, and her sons Michael and Gaston, slept on mats on the floor. It seemed like everything in the hut was covered with the fleas.”

Bronder cycled back to the hospital knowing that the fleas had to be removed somehow and the hut rebuilt to keep them from re-infesting the dwelling. “I read everything I could find on the Internet about jiggers, which wasn’t much,” she told the group at St. Mark’s. “I learned that insecticides would kill them, but the relief would be temporary. People needed to be educated about the fleas, to know they weren’t caused by witchcraft and it was OK to kill the bugs. I decided the only things we could do was remove the bugs from their feet and hands, then somehow put a cement floor in the hut to cap the bugs and keep them from entering bare feet.”

But what needed to be done cost money. Many of her experiences had been detailed in a blog, so friends and family knew the ups and downs of life and work in Kurungu. “I called my sister, who’s a nurse, and my best friend in Louisiana, and told them what was going on and could they figure out some way to help. They raised $1,200.”

Bronder returned to the hut, and persuaded Mary and the boys to come to the hospital in Kurungu. Staff members at St. Camillus spent hours each day removing each flea, one by one, with a razor blade — an excruciatingly painful process, but the surest way of getting the insect out of the skin. While the bug removal was going on, another group rebuilt the hut and cemented the floor, all materials paid for by the funds raised by Bronder’s sister and friend. The “extreme makeover, Kenya-style,” took three weeks. At the end of that time, the flea-free smiling family climbed into a van loaded with bedding, a few chairs, cooking utensils and shoes.

That success encouraged the beginning of a parasite eradication project in Kurungu. Infestation by jiggers had been a social stigma, spoken of only in whispers, before the coming of the “white lady,” Bronder said, but once she acknowledged their existence, it came to light that entire communities were afflicted. The project was on.

She collaborated with a local health official and the Luo chief to raise public awareness, but the project needed funding. She wasn’t sure what to do; how to get the money needed to proceed. So, she prayed. When she checked her emails that evening, there was one from family friend and St. Mark’s parishioner, Gary Jones, who wanted to build a house in Kenya. She emailed him back suggesting the pest eradication project instead.

“We were able to use his donation to for insecticides, cement, shoes and a big bug removal day,” Bronder said. “We expected 70 people, and about 150 showed up. We kept records for the local government, and they showed we gave out 60 pairs of tennis shoes and removed jiggers from 150 people. About 50 of those were children and after the bugs were gone, we all played soccer!”

She told other stories, illustrated by a slide show of the village, many of its people and smiling children making goofy faces for the camera.

Bronder was scheduled to return to Kenya Feb. 21, where she planned to continue her parasite eradication program. Once the current jigger infestation is controlled, she hopes to have learned through research and experimentation, ways of preventing re-infection. She spoke to several groups, to share her story and raise funds for the project. At St. Mark’s, the 80 people who heard her speak donated $6,081, with more pledged in the coming weeks.

Her 9-month tour of duty is up this summer, and Bronder begins medical school at Tulane in the fall. While she is back in the States, she hopes the parasite eradication project in Kenya will keep going.

To learn more about Bronder’s work in Kenya or to donate to the project, visit her blog here.

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