FHI - FHI Mourns India Country Director Kathleen Kay

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC (Dec. 11, 2007) — Kathleen Kay, MPH, who guided Family Health International's India program into one of the largest, most diverse HIV programs in FHI's portfolio, died unexpectedly last weekend after a short illness. She was 48.

The exact cause of death has not been determined, and an autopsy was scheduled for Dec. 12. She will be buried in her native Sydney, Australia, in a Catholic ceremony.

Kathleen, a leader in global HIV work for two decades, had been ill for about two weeks. She was last seen on Saturday, Dec. 8, when she spoke with her housekeeper, says Dr. Bitra George, Kathleen's longtime deputy who is now serving as acting country director. The housekeeper found Kathleen dead at her New Delhi home on Monday morning.

"Kathleen had a remarkable ability to win the respect, confidence and enthusiasm of staff, community and government leaders, implementing partners and financial sponsors," says FHI Chief Executive Officer Al Siemens, PhD. "Her ability to bring people together in pursuit of FHI's mission of improving lives was invaluable."

Indeed, Kathleen guided FHI's India office from its early days in 2001, assembling a talented local staff and helping the office grow into a technical leader in the region and a strong partner to the National AIDS Program. Six years later, FHI's small team has grown to 80 people in six offices. Funders of FHI's India activities now include USAID, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the UK Department for International Development, and the Children's Investment Fund Foundation. FHI's work in India is known for the breadth of its audience — ranging from HIV-positive children to sex workers and their clients — and for its focus on building the capacity of organizations such as the Indian Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS.

Kathleen spent a longer period at FHI — six years — than at any other employer. But when she joined FHI in December 2001, she brought considerable HIV experience. Most notably, from 1987 to 1990, she had been special assistant and confidante to Jonathan Mann, the pioneering director of the World Health Organization's Global Program on AIDS. Her work in those early years of the epidemic was central to her personal and professional identity. Together at WHO, Mann and Kathleen "helped to build the foundation for a global response to HIV/AIDS," says FHI Senior Vice President Sheila Mitchell.

Last month, traveling in Geneva with senior FHI staff before she fell ill, "Kathleen was simply ecstatic when she ran into several of her colleagues during her work with Jonathan Mann in the early '80s. It was a reminder of Kathleen's outstanding, critical and pioneering contribution to the evolution of the global response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic," says Peter Lamptey, MD, DrPH, president of FHI's Public Health Programs. Kathleen remained close friends with Mann's first wife, Marie-Paule Bondat, and was practically a part of the Mann family.

Kathleen subsequently led the Indonesia HIV/AIDS Prevention and Care Project (Australia's first bilateral HIV effort in Indonesia) and also worked at UNAIDS, but she built most of her career on short-term consultancies in HIV policy. Her clients included the Harvard AIDS Institute, the National Institutes of Health, the International HIV/AIDS Alliance, the United Nations Development Program on HIV and Development, the Pacific Regional HIV/STI/AIDS Program, the University of New South Wales, the Commonwealth Department of Health and Housing, and ACIL Australia.

Kathleen received her bachelor's degree in political science and psychology from Australian National University, her nursing degree from the University of New South Wales Teaching Hospitals, and her master's degree in public health from Harvard University.

Again and again, colleagues mention three things about Kathleen immediately — her infectious laugh, her relentless drive, and her capacity to care for others.

If Kathleen's laugh is something many will remember most about her, it is partly because she struggled so hard to regain it in recent years. About four years ago, an illness caused her to lose her voice; when it returned, her speech was throaty, raspy and at times inaudible — an unexpected challenge for someone who valued clear communication and often spoke in public. Kathleen underwent several surgical procedures at the Center for Laryngeal Surgery and Voice Rehabilitation at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and gradually regained much of her natural speech, so much so that she was comfortable speaking on camera for FHI in June 2006. She was proud of her strong voice on that clip, which she shared with her family to demonstrate her vocal progress, and even considered proposing an Oprah segment to feature her surgeon's good work.

Her determination to regain her voice was much like the intensity that Kathleen brought to her work. "Kathleen's passion and dedication to public health were the driving forces behind all that she did," Mitchell says. "She ended her career leading FHI's programs in India, a country she truly loved and wanted to protect from AIDS."

"Kathleen was so vital, with endless energy. That's why this is such a shock," says Leine Stuart, PhD, ACRN, the FHI senior technical officer who has been on assignment to India three times since June. "She was one of those staff who had a certain mystique — she would see a new opportunity and pursue it wholeheartedly."

"Kathleen is an unforgettable person. She was filled with exuberance for life. Her energy — and capacity for work — was boundless," says Gail Goodridge, director of FHI's ROADS Project in Nairobi. Goodridge remembers having dinner at Kathleen's home in about 2002, surrounded by boxes of unpacked household effects. "I'm going to get this place in shape," Kathleen had declared, dashing from one room to the other. But Goodridge says, "I had the feeling that in the trade off of unpacking boxes versus meeting a deadline to start new HIV programming somewhere, the boxes would lose. Kathleen had a clear sense of what was important, and at the top of that list was saving lives."

Kathleen worked long hours, to the exclusion of other parts of her life. "Often if you wrote her an email past 10 p.m. her time she would respond within minutes. I really think she was as disciplined with herself as she was because she just wanted to help as many people as she could in the time she had. She was a one-woman tour de force of effective planning and activity," says Gretchen Bachman, an FHI senior technical officer. Bachman remembers that when Kathleen first arrived in Delhi and was setting up house, she met a woman who was homeless with a very young child. "Without any hesitation, Kathleen, upon hearing her story, asked the woman to work for her and live at her place with her child. In about a day the woman had moved into Kathleen's new place," Bachman says.

Stephen Mills, PhD, MPH, FHI's country director in Vietnam, says, "Only a couple of weeks before she died, she emphasized that we should never be satisfied with mediocrity but strive for excellence. She pushed all of us in that direction and never tired of the fight." Gina Dallabetta, MD, a senior program officer at the Gates Foundation in India who was once an FHI colleague, says, "Kathleen was so engrossed in her work that she taught her maid to make one set of (meals) that did not contain oil, and her maid made the same food every day. I have been to Kathleen's a handful of times for dinner and it was always the same menu — tandoori chicken, boiled vegetables, rice, roti, and palak paneer [a pureed spinach and cheese dish]."

FHI's partners, too, appreciated Kathleen's dedication. Dr. Michele Andina, director of Pathfinder International's Mukta Project in Maharashtra, recalls Kathleen at the now-famous Mumbai gathering of 15,000 sex workers in January. "She was radiant and smiling as always, with that wonderful deep laugh of hers. For her everything was exciting and positive and she was always readily available to answer any questions or concerns."

"Kathleen had a gigantic heart with a concern for everyone — staff, Indians, street children — and a real sense of fair play and justice," says Dallabetta, who remembers Kathleen spending days helping an FHI staff member who had been denied a visa for India after a year. "She cried over the unfairness of it."

Jeanine Bardon, who directed FHI's Asia-Pacific office during most of Kathleen's time in India, said Kathleen "never failed to give 2,000 percent of herself. She was extremely committed to being a mentor, as she had been so well mentored by Jonathon Mann. She will be remembered by her staff for all that she did to help them individually and collectively advance as professionals and to be better people. Ultimately, we should celebrate her for the size and kindness in her heart, the joy in her laughter, her friendship, her dogged and pioneering determination, and her tenacious commitment to make the world a better place for all of us."

Kathleen never married and had no children. Survivors include her mother Marjorie Kay of Woy Woy, New South Wales; sister Therese Maree Lewis and brother-in-law Neal Lewis of Sydney; sister Frances Kay and brother Michael Kay, both of Central Coast, New South Wales; and seven nieces and nephews.

— Steve Taravella

PHOTO: Kathleen Kay addressed an audience of some 15,000 sex workers at the Atmavishwas AIDS awareness event organized by FHI and local partners last January. The success of the event and FHI/India programs is a testament to Kathleen's lifelong commitment to HIV prevention. (Photo: Prashant Panjiar)