Providing Maternal Health Care to 60 mothers

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