Physical Health Uganda Project #12082

Supply a Health Clinic in Uganda

by GlobeMed at Northwestern

Project Report | Dec 21, 2015
A Meaningful Fall Quarter

By Tamar Eisen | Director of Individual Giving

We had an incredible start to the school year after recruiting 15 new students for our GlobeMed chapter! We had an extremely successful quarter in terms of campaigns and fundraising, as our annual Holiday Sweater Sale raised over $4,000, which is over $1,000 more than we raised last year. All of these funds will go directly to supplying the health clinic with medicine, machinery, equipment and health professionals.

Over the past quarter, we have had a number of discussions regarding human rights, health equity, and our role in providing support abroad, in which we analyzed the history and definition of human rights. In our ghUs, we learned about international aid and how it moves through organizations, governments and communities. We paid particular attention to the refugee crisis in our chapter meetings due to the current events of the past few months, and we discussed as a group how public health intersects with the struggle these refugees face and how governments and NGOs should play a role in providing support.

Unfortunately, Aloysious' home was broken into in October and many of his family's belongings were stolen or damaged. The whole chapter collected money separate from our group fundraising goals and wired it to Aloysious and Abby in order to help out with any repairs or other things to get them back on their feet. They are doing well now and are excited to come visit Chicago in the spring for our Benefit Dinner.

We also recently selected our new GROW team, which is a group of four students who will travel to Uganda over the summer to see how our work and your donations are impacting the Adonai Center. The team will also be choosing a subject to research while in Namugoga that will help our whole group better understand the conditions of the community and the individuals that live in it.

We wish everyone a happy holidays and a great start to the new year!

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Sep 21, 2015
GROW and the Start of a New Year

By Tamar Eisen | Director of Individual Giving

Our GROW team recently returned from an extremely successful trip in Namugoga at Adonai. Last summer when the GROW team of 2014 visited Namugoga, Adonai Family Medical Center was still under construction. As of April 2015, the health clinic was officially open to community members. When this year’s GROW team arrived, the health clinic could accommodate at least four patients and many times had plenty more waiting in the lobby. Though this may not sound like a lot, Adonai Medical Center offers family medicine as well as maternal care, including anti, peri, and postnatal services. At all times, a nurse and a lab technician is on staff while a visiting doctor comes in twice a week. They most commonly treat for tropical and infectious diseases such as malaria and typhoid, with an aim to decrease deaths in the area, especially those of ages five years and younger.

The clinic also offers a more affordable payment plan for clients that make medical treatment more realistic and not so daunting. Though students, teachers, and community members now have a more conveniently located and reliable clinic, Adonai Medical Center still must rely on primitive techniques. Even though their hand-operated centrifuge could use replacing, our focus for the next year is on the tools that are crucially missing. This includes simple tools such as forceps, buckets, and aprons, but also more vital devices such as heart monitors. During the group's short six-week stay, a total of six babies were born, not all without complication. Though the nurse on duty was able to deliver a breech baby blindly and without those tools, it is not for certain that this luck will repeat. These are items on the top of our list for the upcoming year.

Lastly, the Adonai Medical Center has construction plans in progress to build a second floor. Because of the organization’s frequent hospitality of visitors, one to two rooms are generally reserved for guests. With this new addition, at least six more beds will be open to accommodate more community members, offering them more privacy while volunteers stay on the second floor. With now only six months of operation, the Adonai Medical Center has already begun to make a profit in the hopes to eventually become self sustainable in paying their health-workers and replenishing their medical supplies even without the help of GlobeMed.

We are excited to begin the new year at Northwestern with some amazing GlobeMed events and fundraisers that are already in the works. In the next few weeks, we will begin to recruit our new chapter members and have our first meetings of the year. We are looking forward to this school year and all the great things we are hoping to accomplish!

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Jun 25, 2015
An Amazing Close to a Successful Year

By Tamar Eisen | Individual Giving Director

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