Marilyn Mutheu Kioko
Marilyn Mutheu Kioko has a passionate interest in critical care medicine and global health. Growing up in Nairobi, Kenya she was motivated to merge the two after partcipating in the care of 8 children from all over Kenya brought to Nairobi for surgery to correct congenital heart defects in the ICU where she was volunteering at the time. The miracle of restoring a child’s strength in a matter of days from surgery to recovery stayed with her, as did the daily challenges of caring for newborns and premature infants with limited specialization, and was the motivation to pursue training in pediatric critical care medicine. She attained her Bachelor's degree from Loyola University Chicago, attended St George’s University School of Medicine, in Grenada West Indies, and completed General Pediatric residency at The Brooklyn Hospital Center in New York.
During her residency she traveled to Haiti shortly after the January 2010 earthquake that devastated Port-au Prince and it’s surrounding, and began working with Pediatric Intensivists in New York to develop a Pediatric Unit in Haiti’s Diquini area to provide acute and intensive care for infants and children. Traveling to Haiti on several clinical and teaching missions, led to the inception of PULSE, which was created out of necessity to focus the talents and resources the group collectively had in pediatrics and intensive care to tackle the challenge of providing life-saving care in countries with limited resources.
In 2010, Marilyn co-founded PULSE and remains on the Board of Directors. She is the Project Manager for PULSE activities in her native country, and has organized 2 successful missions to Kenya in 2011, and a third scheduled for late October 2012, where our Global Health teams certified local doctors and nurses in internationally standardized pediatric and neonatal resuscitation courses, the PFCCS course of the Society of Critical Care Medicine, and a vision to set up a Pediatric Special Care Unit in Machakos, Kenya. Marilyn’s family and friends have been instrumental in supporting her work in PULSE from its creation to hosting medical volunteers on the ground in Kenya. With the help of dedicated marketing, design, IT, management, medical and nursing talent, PULSEans work towards a foreseeable goal. Marilyn is currently a Pediatric Critical Care fellow at Comer Children’s Hospital, University of Chicago Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois.