For nearly 40 years, Dr. Teddy Andrew […]

For nearly 40 years, Dr. Teddy Andrew Mulenga has delivered babies, performed life-saving surgeries, and comforted families through some of their darkest moments. But there is one patient he has never forgotten. Born in Kasama, Northern Province, Dr. Mulenga pursued medicine after studying at the University of Zambia and later graduated with distinctions from Crimea Medical University, specializing in obstetrics, gynecology, and infertility.

 Initially he wanted to be an electrical engineer during his form five, then later went to study psychology at the University of Zambia. Later, sponsored by the late first republic president Dr. Kenneth Kaunda, he went to study medicine.

His career would take him beyond Zambia’s borders to Botswana, where he spent 21 years helping to reduce maternal deaths, leading hospitals, introducing HIV treatment programs, and mentoring health workers.

 Today, he heads the Clinical Officer General Training Department at Lusaka Apex Medical University, where he is preparing the next generation of healthcare professionals. He narrated the moment that broke him down:

 “It was a routine Caesarean section that turned into every doctor’s worst nightmare. The mother developed unstoppable bleeding after the operation, and despite every effort to save her, she died on the operating table.” The tragedy cut even deeper because the woman was the secretary to one of his close friends.

“The toughest time in my career was when I lost a patient on the operating table due to non-stop excessive bleeding after a Caesarean section,” Dr. Mulenga told Zambian Business Times-ZBT in an exclusive interview. For the first time since becoming a doctor, the man who had spent years reassuring grieving families found himself overwhelmed by grief. “I cried for the first time in my career,” he recalls.

“Afterwards, I felt better.” Those tears, however painful, became part of the journey that shaped the doctor many Zambians know today. He defined success as helping families have children; he smiles when he speaks about women who had almost given up hope of becoming mothers. “Success for me has been to see an infertile woman have a baby after years of trying and failing,” he said.

He also believes success begins long before someone wears a white coat. “Success is completing your education to the university level despite falling so many times along the way. After almost four decades in medicine, Dr. Mulenga worries that young doctors are becoming too reliant on machines and too little on their own judgment, but he has a word of advice for them.

 “Use your heads. Don’t blindly order expensive tests like MRI or CT scans when they may not make a difference in the management of a patient. Use your clinical judgment more than technology in patient care,” he said.

 By Karen Ngulube