Window on Kisiizi

Window on Kisiizi

Sunday 1 December 2013

Travel log...

We have done a fair bit of travelling recently and more to come...

We went up to Kampala together for a meeting at Makerere University Guest House for members of the Uganda Maternity & Newborn Hub partnerships and for the Royal College of Paediatrics & Child Health Global Links Scheme.  Dr. Josephine Nantongo, our Consultant Paediatrician, came with us and did a joint presentation with Ian on Patient Safety programmes in Kisiizi.  We met up with Maryanna, our registered nurse on the Hub programme, and with Mandy, our new Hub midwife who will be with us in Kisiizi for six months.

Then last week Ian drove to Mbarara 80 miles away and then went the next day on a coach to Kampala, left his bag at a motel, and braved public transport through busy Kampala to the CORSU hospital near Entebbe.  This is a specialist facility providing expert care for orthopaedic and plastic surgery problems, especially for children.  We hope to have a Memorandum of Understanding to facilitate trips by teams from Corsu to help us with paediatric orthopaedic camps in Kisiizi.

Then Ian attended the Uganda Protestant Medical Bureau [UPMB] Council meetings the next day and in the afternoon went up to the top floor of a very posh building in central Kampala to meet with National Social Savings Fund officials.  Contributions to this scheme are similar to National Insurance in the UK.  Having understood that we were very compliant with the scheme an audit has suggested some payments for some staff had been omitted so Ian went to discuss the issues and to see how we can move it forward.

The following day was the UPMB Symposium with one or two hundred people present.  Their annual report and new strategic plan were presented and Ian gave a presentation on aspects of patient safety work in Kisiizi.  Then a group photo, then on a motorbike boda boda through the rush hour traffic to the bus park to get a coach back to Mbarara... meant I got there about midnight. Drove back to Kisiizi the next day after an informal interview with a potential senior member of Staff and then back into on-call mode as some children needed review.

Now having to think about the next trips:  Ian has been invited to Geneva for a World Health Organization meeting on 19th and 20th December and is aiming to go a couple of days earlier to fit in a short visit to family in Holland and then a quick trip to Macclesfield to see Mark.  After the Geneva conference he will fly back to Kigali and, very conveniently, will arrive there just a few hours before Ruth so they will then travel on together the next day to Kisiizi.

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