Special deliveries...

Well, we have certainly noticed the 9-months post-Christmas holidays impact on birth rate with a big surge in deliveries meaning Hanna has been working really hard.  By 27^th September there had already been 220 births in the month!  As we are still short of senior experienced midwives, and as our percentage of abnormal deliveries is  high because many normal deliveries still take place at home, it is quite demanding.   

In addition the intern doctors rotate every 3 months and need induction and support to settle in.  We are grateful to Dr. Helen Allott from Royal Berkshire Hospital who has made many visits to Kisiizi and has just been here for 6 weeks.  She ran a series of training sessions for the intern doctors on emergency obstetrics.

Special Care Baby Unit continues to care for a range of neonatal problems including small preterm babies.  The photo above shows one of our nurses inserting a cannula to give intravenous fluids for a small premature baby in an incubator. What makes the photo even more special is that the nurse was delivered by Ian when we were first in Kisiizi in the late 80's!

We never know what we will see next.  The photos show a baby born with hyper-extended legs due to mother having oligohydramnios (reduced water around the baby) in pregnancy.   

The baby was treated with plaster of paris casts and physio and made excellent progress.

Renovation

It’s good to see things improved around the compound whether it be fences and paths or vehicles and buildings. It had been embarrassing to see some patients in pain being transported to the wards on trolleys which were shaking due to the rough gravel driveway causing more discomfort so it is encouraging to see the new path from Out-Patients to the ward area now available.  We plan to further extend it to the surgical ward to enable transfer of theatre patients to be smooth and comfortable as well.  We are grateful to friends at Mortimer Church in Reading for sponsoring the path.

 Some of our vehicles are quite old now and the roads here do shake them up a lot so it has been good to see the mechanics working on renovation of the old landrover.  They were so enthusiastic with the spray painting that they have now gone on to also paint hospital lockers!

On the building renovation side we are really grateful to the churches and individuals who supported the work on the old flax factory that houses our surgical wards.   

The first half is open with female patients, mostly those needing gynaecology operations.   

We hope to raise support to continue this work to the other side of the building which houses the male surgical ward and the extension with the female general-surgery patients.

 

Rev. Patrick sorting out the new Chaplain's office

The Chaplains have just moved to a new office that is much nearer to the Chapel and the wards so will be more convenient for the services – especially in the rainy season!  The room is more spacious and a good place for counseling and praying with patients and relatives.  It will be well used in the next few weeks as we prepare for the Hospital Mission on the weekend of 17-19^th October which has the theme “Free Indeed” (which also happens to have been the title used for the magazine produced by the Christian Union at Ian’s medical school, the Royal Free Hospital in London).

Locally grown papyrus reeds are used to make fences.  Papyrus swamps are a common feature in the region though as the population grows very fast more and more swamps are being drained and used for agriculture.  The valley above Kisiizi is being increasingly cultivated with the result that the flow of water along the river and over our waterfall is significantly less than in the past which poses challenges to our hydro-electricity generation in the dry season.

Thes is it!

We are very proud of our son Mark who kept up the momentum with his PhD thesis and was able to hand it in recently... it represents a huge amount of work and is way beyond our understanding! 

He will now complete his post-doc research post at the end of September and start a new job teaching undergraduate chemistry students.

Visit to Mbarara...

Children at a road-side stall

We escaped for a weekend to Mbarara, a city 80 miles away.  We drove a hospital land-cruiser and it proved to be the best journey ever to Mbarara – the murram road (gravel that has been graded) to Rubaale was quite reasonable without significant potholes and took only about 50 minutes.  We then joined the main Kabale – Mbarara tarmac road which is now being upgraded properly and is completed past Ntungamo as far as Itojo government hospital.  It is being actively worked on from there to Mbarara which has always been the worst section of road … someone had even attempted to partly fill the very big potholes.  The road is still challenging as it has eroded and crumbled away on either side but is much better now the holes are easier to negotiate.  

 

 Ian then had a meeting with the team from Rimpscom, an IT company with whom he is working on Stre@mline, a database programme he had developed in Macclesfield (which is still used every day in the paediatric department there).  The hope is to adapt it to work in Kisiizi and to start with a pilot in Out-Patients.

 

Esther demonstrating grinding technique

We then enjoyed meeting up with Esther Kobusingye, our friend who had previously served many years in Kisiizi as Principal Nursing Officer.  On Saturday we went out with her to a new Culture Museum and Centre which was interesting and Esther was pleased to find details of her own family and tribal group ancestry.

 

We then went and visited Reverend and Mrs Katombozi who had also served in Kisiizi in the past.  It was good to be together again.

Rev. Zabuloni Katombozi, Ian, Mrs. Katombozi, Sister Esther Kobusingye

On Sunday we attended the morning service at St. Luke’s Chapel in Mbarara University with a large number of enthusiastic medical students and healthcare workers before going on to meet up with Amos and Mabel Twinamasiko who had also served in Kisiizi when we were first there – in fact Amos was Medical Superintendent when we first arrived in 1987.  We then went on for a short visit to Esther's home out in the rural area south-east from Mbarara and we drove on down to the border with Tanzania then turned westwards for home.

As we look back all those years we are grateful for the friends we made along the way and for blessing us with the chance to meet up again now.