Father D’Agostino (or Father D’Ag as many like to call him) was a physician, psychiatrist and Jesuit priest who fought tirelessly for HIV-positive children in Kenya. He died on November 20, 2006, of cardiac arrest following surgery after he was hospitalized for abdominal pain from diverticulitis.
Standing at about 5 feet tall, Father D’Ag (shown in several pictures below) was a fearless defender for “his” kids. What he lacked in height, he made up for in persistence, compassion and dedication.
He practiced and taught psychiatry in Washington during the 1970s and 1980s before getting called to Kenya. He witnessed first-hand the needs of HIV-positive abandoned children while serving on the board of governors for a large orphanage in Nairobi in 1991. When the orphanage began receiving large numbers of HIV-positive children, Father D’Ag suggested setting up a facility for them so they would have the needed medical infrastructure to care for them. The board refused, so Father D’Ag at 66 years old said “I’ll do it”.
On September 8, 1992, the doors opened at Nyumbani with three HIV-positive children.
But the challenges weren’t over. It was difficult to raise the needed funds to get off the ground because the general response he received was “they’re going to die anyway so why bother”. But that wasn’t Father D’Ag’s vision or his approach to life. He believed that a human life is precious even if they did die early and when life is there, it’s a life to be treasured.
In the early years of Nyumbani’s existence, the facility was very much a hospice center because the children had no access to antiretroviral drugs. But Father D’Ag, an American who knew how easy it was to get antiretroviral drugs back in his homeland, decided his children didn’t deserve to die anymore just because of national regulations and international drug patents. It wasn’t fair that the drugs had not been made available to the continent where they were most needed. So Father D’Ag decided to do something about it. In 2001, Nyumbani became the first place in Africa to import deeply discounted antiretroviral drugs under an Indian pharmaceutical company’s program to make the drugs more affordable.
I’ve been told by many people who knew him here in Kenya that he was someone you just couldn’t say no to because the things he asked of you were the things that would keep you awake at night if you said no—giving a dying child their last wish, putting a child on antiretroviral drugs, or giving a child enough to eat.
I’ve also been told he would back down to no one and when someone told him they wouldn’t help his children, he would not take no as an answer whether that be a U.S. congressman, wealthy international donors or even the Kenyan government. In 2004, he sued the Kenyan government for their policy on banning HIV-positive children from the free primary education system. After bringing all of “his” children to court in order to put a face with the children who were being denied an education, he won the suit allowing for more than 100,000 children throughout Kenya to finally be able to go to school.
The Jesuit priest also created one of the most advanced blood diagnostic laboratories in Kenya at Nyumbani so his children’s health could be monitored. Children with HIV need routine checkups so their CD4 count and viral loads can be taken. A child’s specific dose of antiretroviral drugs changes frequently during their childhood years because the drug make-up is based on their height and weight.
In addition to the orphanage which houses around 100 children at one time, Father D’Ag created in 1998 the Lea Toto program, which is a community-outreach program that provides services to HIV-positive children and their families in several of Kenya’s largest slums. Unable to cope with the increasing number of referrals for admission to his orphanage, he realized how great the need was for proper medical care for children with HIV in these slums. Today, about 2,000 HIV-positive children are enrolled in the Lea Toto program, which provides testing, counseling, nutritional support, antiretroviral drugs, medical care and proper training for caregivers.
And seven months before Father D’Ag died at 80 years old, he opened the Nyumbani Village, which is a self-sustaining community to serve the orphans and elderly left behind by the “lost generation” of the AIDS pandemic.
Aren’t impressed yet?
Father D’Ag, one of six children born to Italian immigrants in Providence, RI, received his undergraduate degree in chemistry and philosophy from St. Michael’s College in 1945, his medical degree from Tufts University in 1949, and a master of science degree in surgery from Tufts in 1953.
He served in the Air Force as chief of urology at Bolling Air Force Base from 1953 to 1955. He completed a psychiatric residency at Georgetown from 1959 to 1965 and received more extensive training at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute from 1962 to 1967.
Father D’Ag decided to enter the priesthood in 1954 and was later ordained in 1966. He taught psychiatry at Georgetown University and George Washington University and from 1983 to 1987 he worked in his private practice in the nation’s capital. Combining his two passions he founded the Center for Religion and Psychiatry at the Washington Theological Union.
Before permanently moving to Kenya, he helped manage refugee camps in Thailand and East Africa in the 1980s. But it was Kenya’s HIV-positive children that he was called to spend the rest of his life fighting for.
Susan Gold, the Fulbright scholar at Nyumbani who I’ve come to know very well, told me she feels sorry for people who didn’t get a chance to meet Father D’Ag.
I certainly wish I had.
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