Gender Equality Uganda Project #17619

Providing Maternal Health Care to 60 mothers

by Karin Community Initiatives Uganda

Project Report | Mar 17, 2015
Outreach at Cetkana village.

By Benna Aguti | Clinical Officer

Dear friends I would like to share with you some of our experiences in the field.

The village that we visited in Cetkana had the most interesting stories and experiences. We are always curious to know how a village got its name. When we asked the local elders in this village they told us that many years ago, when a villager leader walked to the market he saw strange animal feaces along the road. The whole village got concerned as to what animals could have passed by, it is later found to be traders from Sudan and far off places who had used camels for travelling and had passed through their village and the place became known as “Cetkana”, Cet meaning feaces and Kana meaning horses.

The outreach post is approximately 9 km from the Karin clinic with no nearby health facilities, we had an unusual high number of client turn up for all services. When the village people and the local leaders saw us approaching on our motor cycles they were very excited. They warmly welcomed us and told us that they thought we would not turn up, since they had already waited for nearly 2 hours. The problem is we could not leave the health centre, because just as we had packed our outreach kits to leave, a number of children and mothers came at the clinic all with serious cases and we knew that we could not leave Scovia, the nurse to handle this cases alone.

So at around midday we hooped onto the “boda boda” our local transport means. As it is usually the practice we start off with a word of prayer and sharing with them the gospel. Benna then takes them through health education. She talked about clean water and sanitation because our records are showing a number of children turning up at the clinic with water related illnesses for example typhoid. Then we split out the tasks Monica handled the immunization and so the expectant mothers and the children all sit near her table and patiently wait as she gets all her gadgets together. Evelyn called upon the young men and girls to move to her desk and she began counseling them one at a time.

We are always glad to do this work. The outreach is a true reflection of our calling. On this day we meet with Lucy ng. While most patients waited patiently for their turn, Lucy came towards me looking very excited. I knew she wanted to talk to me. She tells me about her daughter.

“I am happy now”, Lucy beams. I have time to eat, my daughter can now go to school. And I can even work in my garden. A few of the men chuckle to hear a woman talk about this daughter with so much joy. But all I notice is Lucy’s glowing face, the fresh flowers in her hair and the lovely green dress she is wearing for special occasions.

Touching her forearm, I reply, “Well, I am glad to hear about your daughter, what exactly happened? I was curious t to know the reason for this excitement.

You see Lucy narrated to that she had visited several health facilities where they had wrongly diagnosed her daughter and she was not well for several months. She was out of school and this made them miserable because it would mean that she cannot perform well in school. Tired of this Lucy resorted to the traditional healers for help. One day, her village was visited by the outreach team and she was convinced by her local village health volunteer to take her daughter for testing. It was when they found out that she was not getting the right treatment.

Her daughter was immediately treated and she continued to visit the clinic thereafter for more treatment.

That really hit me.

Our job is to focus on health, hygiene and sanitation; to make sure the health care is accessible to this people. But it is all beautiful to make someone feel loved and cared for.

Permalink

Dec 2, 2014
End of year gratitude

By hope okeny | project leader

thank you and best wishes for the coming year

Dear friends,

As the year comes to an end I would like to share with you how we have progressed together.

Seven years ago, the guns fell silent in Northern Uganda giving our community respite from over 26 years of conflict. Gulu District has been at the epicenter of major conflicts in Northern Uganda. When the guns fell silent, a whole plethora of humanitarian organizations began packing their bags and leaving Gulu heading off to the newest hot spots of conflict around the globe.

Children in our region have been robbed of their childhood and education and often left psychologically scarred or physically disabled. The future for those who survived is desperately bleak.

The main health problems are poverty related: poor housing, lack of water and sanitation and insecurity. The major diseases which affect the population include: malaria, diarrhoeal diseases, and respiratory infections including tuberculosis, skin infections, STDs, HIV/AIDS and malnutrition.

You wilingly shared your resources with us and have graciously accepted the challenge of starting this journey

This year 2014 began with much energy thanks to the great partners you have been. At our end of the year review meetings held in 2013, we agreed to work even harder to serve more people in these remote villages. We all thanked God for great progress but agreed there was still much more work to be.

We are deeply gratified that the local village communities appreciate our work. This is shown when our clients come back to The Karin Health Care Centre and thank us for the services we have provided and for ensuring that an adequate supply of medicines and vacines are available for the families that we serve every day.

As we come to the end of another year, we asked ourselves again, what have been the greatest highlights of this past year. Of great significance is the wonderful team of staff and volunteers that you are

In the last months our immunisation department has had more children getting immunized. When we started immunizing children we did not realise how big the need was in this community. We moved from half a day once a week to daily services. We are now able to greatly reduce the number of children dying from easily preventable diseases.

Every day, Monica, the nurse who carries out immunisation in the Clinic, comes to work knowing that she will find mothers waiting for her with their babies.She was initially very disturbed by the lack of vaccines for babies, because he knows the serious and life threatening implications. Her routine work involves: counseling/health education to parents/caretakers; planning and conducting outreaches; Screening for immunization status, reducing the number of missed appointments; forecasting, ordering and storing vaccines and other logistics; maintaining refrigeration temperature within the recommended ranges; Defrosting refrigerator and recording the vaccine control book daily. Monica enjoys her work job. She always advises the clients about the importance of immunization.

Many achievements have been made in our program. We are now able to secure syringes and needles to improve on injection safety and create confidence in the communities in our services.

We have made it our priority to ensure that stock depletion does occur. We improved the inventory systems and order time. Your donations continue to be used to cover essential drugs in the Centre and to support the vulnerable who cannot afford health care. We ensure that we stock anti malarials, anti biotics, test kits for malaria, thypoid stool, etc. making sure that our stock always includes children’s medications!

Contaminated water and lack of clean drinking water continue to pose a big problem to many children in our communities. These are recurring and serious problems in schools and in many homes in Gulu, impeding growth, health, and proper development of our children. Educational outreach programmes are ongoing in our Health Centre. Plans are now underway to expand our services to other villages. We plan to educate even more mothers and community members about the necessity of using only safe drinking water and providing proper sanitation.

We also have as a goal to provide a deep borehole (well) on the clinic grounds. We wish to provide a constant source of clean drinking water, even during dry season when shallow wells dry up or are contaimenated, to enable families to get clean water on the clinic grounds. This will serve other multiple purposes such as serving as a meeting place for families, readily availaable health services, health seervice education, Bible study and fellowship, and a place for families to socialize and children to play.

With support from generous donors like you we were able to train 6 community health workers who we refer to as our Village Health Team (VHT) to serve in the greater community. They have been trained and commisioned to talk to women of child bearing age in the communities about family planning and reproductive health. Since the onset of the project, we have seen a rise in the number of women visiting the health centre for family planning services. Last month alone we saw a total of 62 women who were provided reproductive health education in the Health Centre and more were provided during our outreach days.

The unusually heavy rains this year brought along a rise in the number of malaria cases. We received and treated a high number of children with severe malaria. The health staff are always on the lookout for these cases because they know how dangerous this can be if a child is not treated immediately.

This is what happened to Sheila Anena when she was brought in the clinic on one Monday morning, she could hardly walk. She had a high temperature and was vomiting profusely. Her mother was very worried! When she was tested for malaria, she was found to have a malaria parasite in her blood. She was given treatment and by the end of the day she was feeling much better.

Over 80% of clients seen in the Clinic are children with malaria! This year alone we treated over 8,700 cases of malaria in children under five years old. Malaria brings many challenges to the family. It means that the child cannot go to school and the mother cannot work because she has to take care of the sick child.

Prevention is much better than treatment. Because of your generosity, we were able to provide village families with over 1000 bed nets this year alone. These very vulnerable children need bed nets to protect them from the deadly mosquito bites during the night. Please continue to donate generously to our bed net project. Your donation will go a long way in preventing malaria and keeping the children healthy and in school.

The work that we do would not continue without the support from you. Northern Uganda is still one of the most challenging places in the world. We need you to recruit more prayer and financial support for the Clinic! When potential supporters hear us talking about why they should make a donation today, they listen. But when your friends and family hear you talk about our work as someone who is already a supporter and knows that we are making a difference, they’ll act.

Today, we are asking for a few clicks of your mouse: take 5 minutes to view and share our web page with your contacts and tell them why you decided to donate to us and why they should do the same.

Can you do more? Can you contribute towards the bed net project or support the clinic with medicines and support the staff. Consider signing up for a monthly recurring donation today.

Thank you for your support. Visit us on childcareuganda.org or email info@childcareuganda.org

Links:

website

Permalink

Oct 3, 2014
the Maternal unit Construction

By Benna Aguti and Gloria Anena | Clinical Officers

brick by brick

Dear Supporter,

Please accept our heartfelt gratitude for your partnership in preventing maternal deaths in the rural communities where we work in Gulu Uganda. We are always pleased to share with you the journey you so gladly have accepted to walk with us through.

Like the saying goes a journey of many miles begins with a single step. The Karin Medical Health Centre has taken many determined steps in the journey to improve the quality of care to the community, thanks to the leadership of the incharge Benna Aguti, the clinician-in-charge at the clinic.

Karin Medical Health Centre is seeking to expand health care services in the community. The health of a mother impacts the family and the entire community. Her ability and access to receive necessary healthcare largely determines health outcomes for herself and her baby. Like many developing countries, Uganda has high maternal mortality rates of 438/ 100000 births.(UDHS 2012). Uganda’s maternal mortality ratio; the annual number of deaths of women from pregnancy-related causes per 100,000 live births, stands at 435 (UNICEF 2012).

Women die as a result of complications during and following pregnancy and childbirth and the major complications include severe bleeding, infections, unsafe abortion and obstructed labor.

In the last one year since the onpening of the health centre, Benna has delivered six emergency babies. And we do not know how long this will go on for, becuase there are no health centres within this locality, says Benna. “It was tough,” she recalled having to work with barely any delivery equipment, she recalled.

Walking around the half completed building, Benna proudly points out that once this building is completed, the community will be saved from the number of mothers and babies dying during births. “we pray that we can raise enough funds to complete by the end of next year.

For now, the health centre is encouraging mothers to regularly attend Antenatal care and ensure that they are immunised for Tetanus. They also ensure that all thier clients are referred to a nearby health facility when they are ready for delivery. “We are not going to accept any maternal deaths,” said Benna. “We all started with that spirit—that there is no reason a woman should die during pregnancy or giving birth.”

Construction of the new Karin Maternity and Newborn Unit has also moved forward in leaps and bounds since our last update. This facility is on track to open at the end of 2015, and will provide high quality maternal and newborn healthcare services for emergency and high risk cases in the region of Gulu District. The facility will conduct over 5,000 quality deliveries every year, and will add 20 beds, relieving facilities that are currently overwhelmed by demand.

Your contributions and support have made all of this progress possible, but the struggle isn’t over. Northern Uganda is still one of the most challenging places in the world to become a mother, and we need you to recruit more support for our cause. When potential supporters hear us talking about why they should make a donation today, they listen. But when your friends and family hear you talk about our work as someone who is already a supporter and knows that we are making a difference, they’ll act.

Today, we are asking for a few clicks of your mouse: take 5 minutes to share our GlobalGiving page with your contacts and tell them why you decided to donate to us and why they should do the same.

Can you do more? Consider signing up for a monthly recurring donation today. Thank you for your support!

Links:

website

Permalink

‹ 1 2 3 4 5

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.