First Observations

The view from Mayanja Memorial Hospital, located atop a hill in Mbarara. And yes, the sky looks like that everyday here =).


Once again, this was written a while ago...but I didn't have a chance to access sufficiently fast internet to post until today....

A Home on a Hill

This past week we became familiar with our new home for the next few months, the city of Mbarara. We are living in a large hostel on a hill which usually serves as a housing option for students of the nearby Mbarara University of Science and Technology. Few students are to be found roaming the halls with us, however, because they too are on vacation and only a few have stayed for summer work. For now, I will just say that daily life in Uganda is definitely different than back home, but I have enjoyed the beginning of the acclimation process thus far and I hope to dedicate a later entry on the details about our surroundings and mundane activities.

Holy Family Seminary in Masaka

Before I begin talking about Mbarara and our work here, I should mention that in addition to the equator landmark, we stopped at the Holy Family Seminary, where one of our on-site coordinators, Peter, graduated from in his youth (he is now an ordained priest studying in the Duke Divinity School). The students and administration were all very welcoming and they greeted us with their student band as well as a great meal which we shared. A couple of the older students gave us a tour of their home. The facilities were modest, and yet the boys seem to have a very well rounded and spiritual, healthy life while they study at the seminary. Below is a picture of my new friend Xavier and myself.

Safe Motherhood

Monday marked our first day working with our project community partners, the staff of Mayanja Memorial Foundation and Hospital, who serve the community of Mbarara and surrounding areas as a private health care center and collaborate with government health centers in rural towns surrounding Mbarara. Monday was also the first day, or the launch, of their newest community healthcare intervention, Safe Motherhood. The program started off with a week of free antenatal care services for any pregnant women in the Mbarara municipality who show up to the hospital Monday-Thursday, and it will proceed with over a month of weekly visits to four different rural health centers where similar but not all the services will be provided free of charge to any women who show up, given that there is enough time to see them. The program is supported by various members of local government, the Mayanja Memorial Hospital Foundation, Mbarara University of Science and Technology, and Duke University, particularly the Progressive Healthcare Partnership, the student organization which masterminded this Duke Engage project, fundraised, and acquired grants (everyone on the team is a member through their participation in DE).

All the institutions gathered at a formal launch celebration on Monday where we had representatives from all the different institutions give a short speech (David and I spoke for the Duke Engage students), and there was even a parade held where many of us, the DE students, and members of the other institutions, plus a small marching band, walked into town to spread the word about the program.

The health education tent outside Mayanja Memorial Hospital at the Safe Motherhood week in Mbarara.

As students, our involvement in the Safe Motherhood program this week included observing and sometimes assisting in registration, health education talks, physical examinations, ultrasounds, doctor’s consultation, laboratory work, and counseling during the day, and after lunch we were able to attend some guest lectures on the health care system of Uganda, the prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV, HIV in Uganda, the influence of culture in antenatal care, and the formation of the hospital and foundation. Many mothers were served this week and we hope that this intervention will continue to be as promising.

Paul, one of my teammates, practices measuring blood pressure on Jesse, another team member.

Sister Jackie, a nurse at Mayanja Memorial Hospital, and another hospital employee, educate the mothers about antenatal care.

Next week, we DE students will be once again observing the health workers; however we will be in rural health centers. We will also be continuing with more work that is necessary before we can implement a couple of contributions we would like to make to the Safe Motherhood campaign that are in addition to some of the medical equipment and mosquito bed nets that PHP has already been able to donate upon our arrival. One project involves creating, translating, and conducting a baseline community survey that will allow us to assess various factors related to antenatal care issues in this region of the country so that future interventions can be improved and tailored to address any issues that may be found to be of importance for these mothers, and also so that when applying for grants we may have useful and telling information that will allow the institutions to get support for future community outreach. Also, we are looking to possibly use the survey or create another way to assess the effect of the current intervention. Another project involves conducting focus groups with pregnant mothers and other members of the community to have more open ended discussion about antenatal care and related issues (such as family planning). We will also be working closely with a couple of students from the local university, as most of our respondents and participants in these projects will not speak English, instead Runyankole, which is the most common local language in this part of Uganda. In case I had not mentioned this explicitly before, the official language of Uganda in universities, the government, industry and secondary schools, etc. is English (inherited from the time when Uganda was a British colony), but most rural people are much more familiar with Runyankole. As time goes by, perhaps the group will be able to find other useful projects to work on while we are here, but even the healthcare workers can use extra hands in taking down records in order to serve more women daily, so that will be keeping us busy for now as well.

Weekends

Today, Saturday, was a day of rest for the group, and as most weekends will be while we are here, they are very flexible and relaxed. Two of the girls went to visit the hometown of one of our new university friends, Becky, in Kebale (sp?) and they will be spending the night. The rest of us went into town for lunch at an Indian restaurant (a nice change of pace from the traditional Ugandan food), and some of us hung around before we went back to just chill at the hostel. My friend Jesse and I stopped at a park and he was brave enough to invite himself to a casual game of football with some local children.

Jesse playing some football with locals.

Tomorrow, Sunday, most of the remaining students including me will be going to Lake Mburo Park, a wildlife reserve….which I am very excited about. More to come soon…