During our time in Uganda, we will staff multiple outreach clinics in rural Kyenjojo that are surrounding the OneWorld Health permanent healthcare facilities. We will see a wide variety of medical conditions common to the people of that region. For continuity of their care, the patients will receive a referral back to the OneWorld Health facilities in Kyenjojo.
With less than one doctor per 12,500 people on average (1 per greater than 25,000 in some areas), volunteers that participate in the clinical outreach make a tremendous impact on the communities surrounding Kyenjojo, Uganda.
Ugandan children die at a rate that is ten times that of US children and the families there struggle to break the cycle of physical suffering and economic crisis that malaria creates. The need for medical care is so great and volunteers contributing to clinical outreach can help make an impact. I am thrilled to contribute to this mission, using my training and education to serve those in need but also grow in my experience in global health. Both passions, healthcare and helping those in need can be fulfilled with volunteer opportunities like this outreach to Uganda.
What a fulfilling experience! I traveled with OneWorld Health for their first volunteer clinical outreach to Kyenjojo, Uganda. Our team, along with the Ugandan OneWorld Health medical team, set up clinic in a small church and schoolhouse, providing free medical care to adults and children in the surrounding villages, seeing over 980 patients for the week! Patients’ ages spanned from infants a few days old to our most fabulous 100-year-old patient. Diagnoses ranged from malaria to hypertension to dehydration, along with tons of chronic pain. On our final clinic day in Kyenjojo, we assisted the local outpatient clinic with a public health day, providing medical care and at-home delivery packs to pregnant mothers and infants.
I previously volunteered for clinical outreach with OneWorld Health to Masindi, Uganda 13 years ago. This trip seemed to hit with a different perspective. The experience came with a double-edged sword. It was rewarding to see so many patients, touching so many lives and being able to provide the quality healthcare that everyone deserves. At the same time, the experience came with frustrations with the awareness that basic health necessities, such as clean water, are inaccessible to most patients. Those rewarding experiences were also met with sadness knowing that patients, such as one that I met that was later found to have a diagnosis of advanced uterine cancer, would likely die at home due to the financial burdens of affording inpatient care within the local healthcare system.
I work as a Neonatal Nurse Practitioner in a NICU and to my delight, we were also able to visit the NICU at the OneWorld Health Masindi Kitara Hospital. I was happy to see use of isolettes and monitoring for their premature infants, some as early as 29 weeks gestation. It was interesting to see what modifications they used to meet the thermoregulation demands of premature infants. With only two isolettes in the NICU, the older premature infants were placed in bassinets. To help them regulate their temperature, many blankets were used to cover them and the bassinets overnight and during cooler hours of the day. Midday, blankets were peeled away so they did not get overheated.
The patients in Kyenjojo, Uganda, and in so many other areas of the world, live a dramatically different healthcare reality than what we are privileged to experience here in the states. This makes it so much more necessary to participate in medical outreach globally. I am incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to engage with the amazing patients and healthcare providers in Kyenjojo and hope to have an opportunity to return in the near future.
