SAVING LIVES

The people of Kabubbu recognise their future well-being has healthcare needs at all levels.

A Parish Health Centre is a vital resource for the people who are not often able to afford to travel to a district health centre nor can they afford the costs of medicines when they get there.

The Minister of State for Health, district healthcare experts and the rural community in Kabubbu have told us how much they would value partnering with organisations and individuals in the UK assisting in the supply of healthcare.

In Kabubbu missionaries established a clinic in 1930. By 1935 they had left and the clinic closed. There had been no healthcare in the area since then, only a monthly immunisation programme. The nearest clinic was a 10 km walk away.

Quicken Trust, with the help of the British Airways 'Change For Good' programme and Unicef, built and equipped the Kabubbu Parish Health Centre to provide primary healthcare, primary healthcare education and simple maternity services to this rural area.

The Health Centre opened in December 2003. It is now treating around 1,500 patients each month by five nurses.

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SAVING MOTHERS

In February 2000 in Kabubbu, about 25 kilometres north of Kampala, accompanied by a nurse, we met with a lady in her late 60's living alone. She told of her four sons. Her eldest son married, they had children, and then he died. Her next son married the same lady. The story was repeated, and repeated by her other two sons. Eventually the wife of all her four sons died, as did most of the children.

The wife was a carrier of the HIV virus. It was as though she had 'killed' her four husbands, their children and then herself. We saw five large concrete slab graves in the land around her house where they were buried - and the six small graves of the children.

Although it is the second biggest killer in Uganda after malaria, HIV/AIDS has not been a disease to admit to having. It has carried a stigma. Men deny they have AIDS but if they think they do they commonly go to the Witchdoctor whose prescribed cure is to sleep with a virgin.

Mothers carry the responsibility for raising their children. Few fathers will be actively involved. But the husband maintains he must have regular unprotected sex with his wife as part of his manly rights and often passes HIV/AIDS to her. This is usually a death sentence to his wife because of the prohibitive cost of treatment and will leave his children motherless. But things are changing.

HIV/AIDS treatment can now be obtained free of charge through several agencies. Education and community sensitisation to the problem is slowly removing the stigma. It is getting to the treatment centres and having a protein filled diet that is now the barrier. In Kabubbu we have seen an increase in the number of mothers seeking help. Through transport to the centres by ambulance and providing a protein rich diet supplement we are starting to save mothers lives and giving their children a chance to grow and mature in their own home environment.

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TREAT A CHILD

This fund was started by a family in the United States and the company for which his father worked in memory of their 8 year-old son - David Reddington. To find out about what the David Reddington Memorial Fund has achieved in his memory, please click here.

In Kabubbu, Jackeline needed help.

Her head and the left side of her face and body were covered on blisters and her wounds were badly infected. She had been horrendously burned.

Her family used a small screw top tin filled with paraffin with a wick out of the top for their light. This had either been filled too full, not screwed down correctly or the wick slipped into the tin. It exploded showering burning paraffin into the room turning it into an inferno. The entire family, except for this small girl, was killed. She is alone with no medication. The nearest Medical Centre was 10 km away. She had no relative to carry her there.

Today she not only benefits from monthly sponsorship for her education. Her sponsors have also paid for her to have two operations.

She has had her left eye treated. Since the fire she had been unable to close it properly. The doctors took a small piece of ligament from her thigh and repaired the ligament by her eye enabling her to open and close her eyelid. The operation cost £40.

The skin on her left arm had seared to her body during the intensity of the fire. A second operation has released the skin and with a skin graft she now has proper use of that arm. This operation also cost £40. These operations have given her a new lease of life.

Jackeline's story is just one of many of orphaned children needing medical attention.

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FIGHTING MALARIA

Malaria is the biggest killer in the world. It is also the biggest killer in Uganda. Greater than HIV/AIDS. It leaves more children parentless than anything else. And that is true in Kabubbu.

The Health Centre nurses are carrying out an education programme linked with a welfare programme fighting malaria.

Malaria is debilitating causing the patient to have days of high fever sometimes resulting in death. There may not be a cure but there is a way of fighting malaria and seeking to control the access of mosquitoes to the people.

With the assistance of a grant from UNICEF a major malaria control programme has been started. This features the supply of a mosquito net to every person in Kabubbu, the means to hang it correctly plus a bed and mattress. Why beds and mattresses?

By its nature a mosquito net can only be fully effective if it denies the mosquito any access inside it. When nets were first given to some of the community they hung them up where they slept usually on a pile of rags or straw on the mud floor of their hut. And, of course, the mosquitoes crept under the nets and fed on the sleeping people.

Beds and mattresses are now being supplied. This means the nets can be tucked under the mattresses denying the mosquito any access. We have the beds made by local craftsmen in Kabubbu to minimise cost and provide an income in the community.

We understand the introduction of this process has greatly reduced the incidence of malaria in Kabubbu and are making the concept available to every person in every household.

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SPONSOR A NURSE

On December 1st 2003 the Kabubbu Parish Health Centre opened.

It is being well used by up to 60 patients a day - 18,000 a year - and has been established as the immunisation centre for the area by the District Director of Health Services. It has a laboratory to carry out diagnosis for AIDS, typhoid, malaria and other tropical diseases plus two additional rooms for maternity delivery and aftercare.

The nurses are conducting a wide range of health education including an antenatal and postnatal programme. This is vital in a rural community. Why?

Tradition has it that a mother must give birth within the confines of her house, usually a mud hut with a mud floor and in very unsanitary conditions. Immediately after birth the placenta is buried in the ground around the house as a means to ensure the child will remain at home to look after the mother in her old age. Unfortunately few children do so.

It takes a great amount of education to convince mothers to use the more sanitary delivery and aftercare facilities at the Health Centre.

Among its five nursing staff are two who are trained midwives and one is a trained counsellor in sexually transmitted diseases, something vital in a rural area. There are needs for additional nursing staff.

A nurse's salary is about £1,200.

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FILL A PILL BOX

The Kabubbu Health Centre has a full dispensary of necessary medicines to treat rural illnesses and diseases.

Unfortunately this would not be the case in most government supported centres in Uganda where medicines are scarce. It is also the case that a doctor will often prescribe a medicine that is not available in the dispensary of a health centre but is only available at high cost from a medical store that he owns nearby.

Many medicines come from India or China and seemingly do not have the same strength as medicines manufactured in the UK or Germany.

Medical treatment in Kabubbu is free to all the children attending either of the Quicken Trust sponsored schools and a course of treatment for residents of Kabubbu is reduced by 50% of the normal cost.

Already the health of the community has shown dramatic improvements. Can you help fill a pill box with vital medicines?

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DRIVE THE AMBULANCE

Although Kabubbu is only 10 km from the nearest District Health Centre at Kasangati and 25 km from hospitals in Kampala they may as well be a continent away if you urgently need to get to them.

The only means of travel from Kabubbu to more major health facilities have been by foot, by bike, by boda-boda (a 'step-through' small motorbike) or, if you are fortunate, by car if you can find one in the village. And with a boda-boda or car you will have to find the money for fuel to Kampala which will cost several days wages - if you have a job.

If you are a pregnant mother with birthing complications (breech birth or severe bleeding) you would die in the village before medical help could get to you. And many did.

In 2006 an ambulance was provided through Rotary International with the Rotary Club of Eastbourne and the Rotary Club of Rubaga in Uganda. This now meets a vital need in getting people to hospital and as the focus of an immunisation programme to a wide rural area - both saving lives. It also takes HIV/AIDS patients to Kampala for regular treatment.

Incidentally, there are about 52,000 villages in Uganda, hundreds of towns and one capital city. We know of no other village that has an ambulance and most ambulances in towns (if they have one) don't operate because of mechanical problems or lack of fuel.

Fuel is expensive. With recent troubles in Kenya through which all fuel to landlocked Uganda comes, it now costs UG Shs 3,000 (£1.00) per litre (a day's wage in a rural area) - as in the UK but without our standard of living! It would cost Ug Shs 30,000 (£10.00) for a round trip to a Kampala hospital and back.

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