It's been a busy time since we returned from our trip last month and only now do I have a chance to put down a few words about what a great trip it was. As I've noted before, every trip to Uganda (I've lost count of how many over these last 10 years) is unpredictable and brings new challenges and successes. This one didn't disappoint. Our team on the ground there has ramped back up after the long Covid shutdown and most recently the Ebola outbreak in Uganda, seeing many more patients than in the past couple of years. Traveling to farther reaches in the district they cover, they are now helping to reduce suffering in so many people in the rural communities. It was a pleasure to spend our first week of this trip with Prossy and her staff, seeing them in action, not that there weren't challenges and frustrations due to limited access to specialized care and treatments that we can't provide locally. While we bring supplies with us, some have to be obtained locally and some treatments are just not available without significant amounts of money and untangling massive amounts of red tape. Such was the case of the patient we traveled far out in the villages one day this visit and found she was suddenly paralyzed from the waist down and would have benefited from emergency radiation therapy, a simple task in the US. Despite our best efforts, arranging for transportation to Kampala, providing emergency medications to temporize the situation, and calling our contacts at the only hospital in the country that can do radiation treatments, she never received the treatment. But fortunately, the palliative care team made sure that she (and all the patients we saw) had successful relief of their suffering even if we couldn't get them the treatments they required for their underlying conditions. Bittersweet but sometimes, sadly, that's what you have to accept in under-resourced settings.
Our second week was spent in the capital meeting with Hospice Africa Uganda (HAU) and training them in the use of the video based curriculum we at Palliative Care for Uganda have developed to educate healthcare workers in resource limited settings in palliative care communication and techniques. We presented HAU with some of the educational modules (free of charge) to use in their medical school and nursing school classes in hospice and palliative care medicine.
We always enjoy bringing doctors and nurses from the US with us on our trips to Africa and this time we brought two US physicians, a palliative care attending and a palliative care fellow-in-training , both from Weill Cornell in NYC. It is gratifying to see these young doctors work in Uganda, teaching the healthcare workers there, but also learning a great deal from the Ugandan workers and patients. They also helped out the local doctors at Naggalama Hospital performing health assessments on 1500 secondary school students! It was great to see some healthy patients for a change.
We also arranged for the visiting doctors to round with the palliative care doctor at Mulago Hospital in Kampala, the main government hospital for the country. (Thank you Dr. Liz!) Additionally they gave a lecture to the staff of one of the community hospitals as well as helping with the implementation of our educational modules at Hospice Africa Uganda. I think Drs. Larry and Lauren both had a valuable visit.
Here are some pictures from this trip:
Our second week was spent in the capital meeting with Hospice Africa Uganda (HAU) and training them in the use of the video based curriculum we at Palliative Care for Uganda have developed to educate healthcare workers in resource limited settings in palliative care communication and techniques. We presented HAU with some of the educational modules (free of charge) to use in their medical school and nursing school classes in hospice and palliative care medicine.
We always enjoy bringing doctors and nurses from the US with us on our trips to Africa and this time we brought two US physicians, a palliative care attending and a palliative care fellow-in-training , both from Weill Cornell in NYC. It is gratifying to see these young doctors work in Uganda, teaching the healthcare workers there, but also learning a great deal from the Ugandan workers and patients. They also helped out the local doctors at Naggalama Hospital performing health assessments on 1500 secondary school students! It was great to see some healthy patients for a change.
We also arranged for the visiting doctors to round with the palliative care doctor at Mulago Hospital in Kampala, the main government hospital for the country. (Thank you Dr. Liz!) Additionally they gave a lecture to the staff of one of the community hospitals as well as helping with the implementation of our educational modules at Hospice Africa Uganda. I think Drs. Larry and Lauren both had a valuable visit.
Here are some pictures from this trip:
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