WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) – A Wichita architecture firm designed a hospital in Kenya, serving a pressing need for open heart surgeries for children and young adults.
Connor Crist, an architect with HFG Architecture in Wichita, said the hospital is the vision of a doctor in Tenwek, Kenya, which he wanted to make real.
“This is a dream; nothing like this exists,” Crist said.
HFG Architecture in Wichita specializes in healthcare architecture and brought its skills to this area of East Central Africa. The firm helped design the Tenwek Cardiothoracic Centre, an extension of Tenwek Hospital, one of the largest missionary hospitals in Africa, working with location partners to help build it.
“We saw the potential to make this really significant impact,” David Wright said. “Some ways more tangible than the work that we do here.”
David Wright, the CEO of HFG Architecture, said the hospital will meet dire public health needs. Wright noted that children contract rheumatic fever – which can develop if illnesses like strep throat aren’t properly treated – at alarming rates in this area of sub-Sahara Africa, including Kenya, and there is a lack of antibiotics. Cases of rheumatic fever are rare in developed countries like the U.S. because of antibiotics.
“What we’ve come to learn is there, in sub-Sahara Africa, specifically in the country of Kenya, there’s a need for 5,000 open heart surgeries a year. Right now, in this (Tenwek) hospital, it does roughly 250, and they (Tenwek) do half of the open heart cases in the country, but there’s this pressing need in Kenya and in this part of sub-Sahara Africa,” said Wright.
Rheumatic fever can lead to rheumatic heart disease, where heart valves fail. Many children don’t live beyond their mid-20s, but there is a treatment: doctors can treat rheumatic disease with open heart surgery.
“At any given time, there is a waiting list of 800 kids (at Tenwek),” Wright said. “Most of them will never make it to surgery.”
Missionary Doctor Russ White, Ethiopian cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Arega Leta, Kenyan pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Agneta Odera and the team practicing at Tenwek Hospital dreamed of a place where they could make a more significant difference. Crist and Wright helped design the groundwork for that dream to become a reality.
Crist said, “I don’t think there’s really anything like this in Africa. There’s hospitals that are doing some open heart surgeries, but none to this scale. There’s even other missionary hospitals on the continent that are doing amazing work, but they have very focused areas; sometimes, they have limited capacity as well. This is really just an amazing thing for Dr. White, who had an audacious goal of ending or putting a significant dent in rheumatic heart disease in Africa.”
Crist said he learned about the project through Engineering Ministries International after working with them in college. He presented the project to his colleagues at HFG.
Crist and Wright started designing the new center in 2018, and it opened in October of this year. The hospital is 300,000 square feet with six operating rooms and 150 beds, with the option to expand.
Designing a hospital in Kenya presented a number of challenges. The two Wichita architects also wanted the hospital to be self-sufficient, so it is primarily powered by solar energy and equipped with a water treatment plant.
Crist and Wright said that during their trips to Kenya, they wanted to ensure that this building could care for the patients and those working there. They talked with the doctors and staff to learn of their needs.
“When we started, it was actually a lot smaller, and we started looking through the study and asking facility staff, when you get done with an open heart, cardiothoracic, say valve replacement, how long does the post-op last in Kenya? How long does this phase last, and this phase?” Crist said, “As we looked through that, we came to quickly realize that this was going to be a lot bigger than we originally thought and needed to be to serve the need.”
The campus also includes apartment housing and offices with private bathrooms and showers.
The hospital has an open design and uses natural lighting with scenic views of the natural landscape.
Although the building itself has dramatically impacted the children in that area, its design has the potential to change lives forever.
“The vision is to train the next generation of cardiothoracic surgeons and support staff so that open heart surgery specifically can be done across the continent to make a dent in this public health issue. It was really attractive to be a part of it because we get to play a small part in having an impact that lasts generations,” Wright said.
Tenwek Cardiothoracic Centre is currently scheduled to have its first patient in mid-January. The hospital staff have spent the months leading up to getting acquainted with the new facility.
“Taking something that was one operating room and a couple extra patient rooms and extrapolating that out to 100s of thousands of square feet, there’s a lot to get going,” said Crist.
“The project in Kenya, seeing it all the way to the end, has been a career-defining moment for me.” Wright said, “The tangible difference is so significant.”
HFG Architecture has started work on another project in Africa, a 200,000-square-foot, 150-bed pediatric hospital in Cameroon. It would be the country’s first and only full-service children’s hospital.
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