BY TANYA R. COCHRAN
I
n Kenya, David Silverstein, MD ’67, is known as the father of cardiology. Shortly after his arrival there in the 1970s, he turned an empty room in a Nairobi hospital into the country’s first cardiac catheterization lab.. But that was just the beginning for the Chicago native, whose plans for a two-year stint in the East African country turned into an adventure of a lifetime spanning more than four decades. “When I was at the University of Chicago, I didn’t really know there was a world out there,” the 72-yearold physician said. “I was so much into academics and school and trying to excel.” Silverstein graduated from medical school at the University of Chicago when he was just 22 and did his residency in Seattle. A stint at a U.S. Air Force base in Taiwan sparked a desire to see more of the world. After his military service, he returned to Seattle and completed a cardiology fellowship. When a cardiologist friend from Kenya suggested he apply for a position in Nairobi, he didn’t hesitate. “I didn’t hear from them for a long time, and suddenly they called and said, ‘Please come tomorrow. You’re badly needed to run our new cath lab,’” he recalled. Silverstein quickly discovered the “cath lab” was nothing more than an empty room. “Everybody was telling me, ‘Just enjoy your time here. You’re not going to get a cath lab going.’ But somehow, I still wanted to do it.” At the time, Silverstein was the only cardiologist in Nairobi. No one there had ever seen a cardiac catheterization, so he had to educate a team. A lack of trained professionals meant cultivating those with a desire to learn. “There was a gardener who was taught to do EKGs, who we then trained to be a technician,” Silverstein said. “Now he’s retired, but he was a very capable technician. He ended up going to England for further training. And by then, I had given several lectures, and several of the young Kenyans who were residents were interested in cardiology.” Career set for take off Within a few years, Silverstein went from running the cath lab at the Kenyatta National Hospital to heading its cardiology unit. He also was promoted to senior lecturer at the University of Nairobi School of Medicine. “I had just arrived for the first graduating class, so every student from the second graduating class onward was my student,” he said.
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In 1977, he was named chief cardiothoracic physician for the government of Kenya, and in 1983 he was asked by then-Kenyan president Daniel arap Moi to be his personal physician. Thirty-three years later, he still cares for the former president. “The exciting part is that I got to travel with him all around the world,” Silverstein said. “Whenever he traveled overseas, I would go, too. I was in the Great Hall of the People in China during Deng Xiaoping’s time.” Along the way, Silverstein would care for the first attorney general in Kenya as well as the former president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela. Years later, Silverstein ran into Mandela in a hotel. “When he passed by me, he said, ‘Dr. Silverstein, I’m still alive. You’re a better doctor than you thought,’” Silverstein recalls with a chuckle. “I couldn’t believe he remembered my name.” Silverstein has “cut back” to working 12 hours a day and has no plans to retire. “His phone is always ringing,” his wife says. “He gives out his personal number, and if he wants to spend 45 minutes with a patient, it’s okay.”
A celebrity in his own right But that didn’t surprise Silverstein’s wife, Channa Commanday, a nurse practitioner. “He’s very famous in Kenya,” said Commanday. “He’s famous among the medical people, and it’s a big honor for the young residents to get a spot rotating with him.” The recognition started not long after Silverstein’s arrival. In the 1980s, Nairobi experienced two incidents of Marburg virus disease, a severe illness with symptoms indistinguishable from Ebola virus disease. Silverstein was involved in the treatment and diagnosis of both cases. Other conditions he has diagnosed and treated have included bubonic plague, rabies, tetanus, kala azar, botulism and many cases of malaria and tuberculosis.
MEDICINE ON THE MIDWAY
SPRING 2017
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