Profile Janice H. Kurth, M.D., Ph.D.

African health workers, doing a lot with a little, impress local Rotary president during exchange trip to Kenya

By Arthur Lightbourn

Janice H. Kurth, M.D., Ph.D. Photo/Jon Clark

Looking very much like the athlete she is, Dr. Janice Kurth is a woman whose philosophy, borrowed from her scientist father, is simply “Just go for it.”
And that’s exactly what she’s been doing much of her life, going for it, as a physician, mother of two daughters, school volunteer, community activist, fitness practitioner (up at 4:30 a.m. to worko9ut at the gym), and, most recently, as president of the Del Mar Rotary Club and leader of a six-member exchange study group to Africa.
We interviewed the 47-year-old Dr. Kurth in her local home from where she and her husband, neurologist Dr. Mathias Kurth, conduct business as independent consultants to pharmaceutical companies.
She was just getting over a touch of jet lag, but eager to share the highlights of her African experience which, she says, confirmed her belief that the best way to improve the lives of Africans is to provide them with training, equipment and educational opportunities.
“Just throwing money at problems is not the answer. Training is,” she said, “for disease prevention, but not just medicines, helping them to change their life style to prevent disease.”
The group left for Africa on Jan. 31 and returned to San Diego on Feb. 28.
Sponsored by Rotary International, the one-month study tour was an exchange between two Rotary districts in the world (District 5340, Southern California and Orange County), and District 9200 (comprising Rotary clubs in five countries in East Africa, including Kenya).
“Our team was composed of all healthcare professionals,” Kurth said.
The study group consisted of two physicians, Dr. Kurth as team leader, and UCSD postdoctoral fellow Dr. Lwbba Chait as a team member, along with four young adult health professionals: UCSD research epidemiologist Estela Blanco, Linda Vista Healthcare Center director Tara Beeston, UCSD public health coordinator Justine Kozo and Scripps Encinitas orthopedic physical therapist Tim Goldberg.

By definition, the team leader was a Rotarian and the other team members were non-Rotarians, ages 25 to 40, whose career paths may benefit from what they experience during the vocational, cultural and fellowship exchange, Kurth explained.
Based in Kenya and traveling around by van, the group visited hospitals, rural health care clinics, orphanages for HIV-positive children and abused children, boarding schools many of which were for orphans, day and residential centers for street boys.
They also visited the local Rotary-sponsored Jaipur Foot Project in Nairobi that has provided 5,000 amputees with artificial limbs. Kenya has a high number of amputations as a result of motor vehicle accidents and animal attacks.
Another impressive visit was to a Rotary-sponsored school devoted to adult literacy. One grandmother wearing her school uniform told of being taken advantage of because she could not read and do simple arithmetic. “But now,” she said, “I know how to read and write and do my math and nobody can call me stupid.”
In addition, the group made presentations to various Rotary Clubs and visited cultural locations, including a Masai villages.
Kurth said the exchange was really about understanding the differences in our healthcare system and the healthcare system in Kenya.
“As most people would imagine, the resources are much more limited than we have in the United States,” in the breadth of medications and equipment.
“We visited a 900-bed hospital that didn’t even have CT scanner or an ultrasound, yet what impressed me the most was the level of competency and the dedication and the passion of the medical staff there. I was amazed at what they were able to achieve with so little,” Kurth said.
“And I think the lesson for us in the United States is to realize that and to see that even though we may not have everything we need all the time, a lot can still be done and human ingenuity goes a long way.”
She was impressed by the work of Rotary clubs throughout Kenya.
“Almost every project we went to, there was some piece of equipment, some building, or a water tank for rain water that would have the Rotary symbol on it,” she said.
Clean water projects are among Rotary’s contributions throughout Africa, she said.
But, she also discovered that money often comes with a lot of baggage in Africa.
“One has to be very careful in Kenya, even with generosity, because being generous in the wrong way can actually do more harm than good...Individually, as well as a nation, we have to be very careful about how we give aid in Africa and not create more dependencies by our generosity.”
Too often, she said, aid does not reach the people it is intended for.
“So it’s very important that when we deliver any kind of aid or service, we have someone on the ground that we trust. And that’s why I think Rotary is a great resource...It has people on the ground, in country” to make sure aid and assistance are properly dispensed.
Kurth was born Janice Marie Hall in Berkeley, Calif., where her father was studying chemistry at UC Berkeley. She was the eldest of three children and grew up in Houston, Texas, where her father worked for Shell Chemical.
She earned her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Austin College in Sherman, Texas, in 1985; married in 1987; earned a Ph.D. in human genetics from Stanford University, 1991, and her medical degree from the University of Arizona, 1995.
She practiced as a physician in a group for a short time in Phoenix before devoting herself to applied research.
Moving to San Diego in 1997, she worked as a pharmacogenetics researcher with various biotech firms before she and her husband established a consultancy for pharmaceutical companies.
She joined Del Mar Rotary six years ago.
One of the most vivid and disturbing images she brought back from her trip to Africa, she said, was the look she saw in the eyes of a street boy.
“We were stuck in traffic in Mombasa. And I looked out the window and this teenage boy, I would guess maybe 14 or 15 years old, kind of waved to me. I turned toward him and his eyes turned towards mine and they were the most haunting, disconnected eyes I’ve ever seen. And I saw he had a container of glue. He was a glue sniffer and those eyes … just haunt me to this day.”
Among the many projects Rotary is sponsoring in East Africa are shelters for street kids, like the boy Kurth observed, often homeless, abused and struggling with addictions.
As a result of her trip, Kurth anticipates that the Del Mar Rotary Club will be contributing toward providing much-needed lab equipment for hospitals and clinics in Africa.
Kurth and members of her team wrote accounts of their impressions and experiences of the trip, with photos, on a blog that can be viewed on the Internet at: www.kenyagse2010.blogspot.com.
The team will address the noon luncheon meeting of the Del Mar Rotary Club on April 1 in the Fellowship Hall of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Del Mar. The public is invited.