Our 8 warrior heroine we are celebrating on this International Women's Day is Marie Ojiambo. We always complain that there is limited choices of drugs when it comes to management of sickle cell disease, but when we are asked to participate in a clinical trial we ask many questions and when they are answered we end up saying, yeah you have answered but you don’t understand sickle cell. Marie Ojiambo has provided a solution and is the right person to answer most of these questions being born and diagnosed with sickle cell at 1 year. Marie has a Doctorate of Pharmacy degree from the University of Nairobi, School of Pharmacy and Masters in Industrial Pharmacy at St. John’s University in Queens, New York where she majored in drug research and development studies.
She was on the team that created oneSCDvoice an education platform that gathers credible disease information and empowers people impacted by SCD.
Marie was Miss Kenya USA (2013) and the People’s Princess Miss Africa USA (2013).
In 2013, she founded the Sickle Strong Initiative (SSI), a Kenyan based charity that helps sickle cell warriors and their family members. Through Ongea (meaning: to speak out!), a platform for sickle cell warriors to talk about their condition, share and interact, has provided an opportunity for the warriors to engage with and challenge the government, the pharmaceutical industry, insurance companies, CBO’s, NGO’s, other stakeholders as well as the public on what they are doing to improve the health care and environment that sickle cell warriors are exposed to.
In 2013, she founded the Sickle Strong Initiative (SSI), a Kenyan based charity that helps sickle cell warriors and their family members. Through Ongea (meaning: to speak out!), a platform for sickle cell warriors to talk about their condition, share and interact, has provided an opportunity for the warriors to engage with and challenge the government, the pharmaceutical industry, insurance companies, CBO’s, NGO’s, other stakeholders as well as the public on what they are doing to improve the health care and environment that sickle cell warriors are exposed to.
Marie has received a number humanitarian awards and honors from the Kenya community for her efforts in raising sickle cell disease awareness.
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