In the December 2001 edition of HealthServe, Joan Hall wrote an article about the hospital she manages in The Lost Hospital - Rushere, Uganda. Kent2CapeTown is a project being carried out by a group of graduates from Kent. On 4th August, they set off in two Land Rovers on a 30,000 kilometre journey from Demelza House in Kent to drive through seventeen countries in order to reach Cape Town, South Africa. Their primary aim is to raise funds for Demelza House, a children's hospice. The journey is being broken three times to help three African projects as well, making the focus of the work more international. The team spent December 2001 and January 2002 in Rushere helping Joan with her work at the hospital. Jonathan Besley, the project leader reports for MMA HealthServe.
We set off from Kisumu in Kenya on the long road to South Africa on 17th January. Our time at the The Pillar of Faith Home for needy Children , our first African Project, was extremely rewarding and beneficial and it was sad to leave them. Nelson Ayaga, the founder and surrogate father to the orphans, is an incredible man with an amazing faith. He plans to expand the orphanage to care for over 100 children. With God's help, I believe he will achieve this. We set off in the two Land Rovers, which have come to be known as 'the yellow perils', for the border with Uganda at Busia and then on to Kampala, its capital. The next day we headed on to Rushere Hospital in the remote village of Rushere seventy miles north of Mbarara near Lake Mburo National Park.
Uganda is a breathtakingly beautiful country but is still struggling to recover from civil war. The reign of terror began in 1971 when Idi Amin staged a coup, forced President Milton Obote into exile and began to massacre anyone who opposed his regime. The country's economy and infrastructure collapsed and hospitals and schools were forced to close. Amin was finally overthrown by Yoweri Museveni only to be replaced again by Obote. The National Resistance Army (NRA), led by Museveni finally achieved a clean sweep of the corrupt administration and peace came in 1986. Now, sixteen years later, Uganda has the fastest growing economy in Africa, is beginning to attract tourists and is being given much attention from the world's charitable organisations. Rushere Hospital is one of many rural hospitals struggling to develop and to serve the community. President Museveni lives in the area and, with his new found popularity, was able to find a Christian group in the U.S. willing to build a hospital in Rushere. It was opened in October 1992 and was founded with a Christian constitution. Joan Hall had been a missionary with MAM in East Africa since the 1950s, and was brought in to be the hospitals's administrator in 1999.
President Museveni is still the patron of the hospital. We were lucky enough to meet the President at his home during our stay. It was an incredible experience to meet a man with such understated authority and such natural presence. It struck us all that he is comparable to Nelson Mandela. Like Mandela, he became president because of his long struggle against an oppressive regime, and like his South-African counterpart, he has a deep love and understanding of his country and its people.
We arrived in late December and set about arranging and filing the past ten years worth of patients' medical records into precise chronological order. The Christmas break included an unforgettable safari to Lake Mburo National Park and we saw in the New Year at Lake Bunyonyi on the Rwandan border. We returned to the hospital in early January, straight back into emptying out the hospital stores, a task that has needed doing for the past ten years.
To the delight of the hospital staff, we came across a cornucopia of useful equipment hidden away in the stores. Sterilising equipment, beds, sheets, drip-stands, test tubes, crutches and much more were uncovered in an operation comparable to an archaeological dig! An anaesthetic kit was discovered which was the last piece of equipment required for the opening of the newly refurbished operating theatre. We even came across a huge x-ray machine dating back to the 1950s. We are hopeful that we may be able to coax a medical museum into buying it.
As a team, we are on good form. We have done little driving over the last month and a half and, though we have thoroughly enjoyed having time to meet and get to know people, we are eager to hit the road again.
If you are interested in knowing more about the Kent2Capetown project, please visit their websitewww.kent2capetown.com. If you would like to know more about the work at Rushere hospital, please contact the MMA HealthServe Office, healthserve@cmf.org.uk
We set off from Kisumu in Kenya on the long road to South Africa on 17th January. Our time at the The Pillar of Faith Home for needy Children , our first African Project, was extremely rewarding and beneficial and it was sad to leave them. Nelson Ayaga, the founder and surrogate father to the orphans, is an incredible man with an amazing faith. He plans to expand the orphanage to care for over 100 children. With God's help, I believe he will achieve this. We set off in the two Land Rovers, which have come to be known as 'the yellow perils', for the border with Uganda at Busia and then on to Kampala, its capital. The next day we headed on to Rushere Hospital in the remote village of Rushere seventy miles north of Mbarara near Lake Mburo National Park.
Uganda is a breathtakingly beautiful country but is still struggling to recover from civil war. The reign of terror began in 1971 when Idi Amin staged a coup, forced President Milton Obote into exile and began to massacre anyone who opposed his regime. The country's economy and infrastructure collapsed and hospitals and schools were forced to close. Amin was finally overthrown by Yoweri Museveni only to be replaced again by Obote. The National Resistance Army (NRA), led by Museveni finally achieved a clean sweep of the corrupt administration and peace came in 1986. Now, sixteen years later, Uganda has the fastest growing economy in Africa, is beginning to attract tourists and is being given much attention from the world's charitable organisations. Rushere Hospital is one of many rural hospitals struggling to develop and to serve the community. President Museveni lives in the area and, with his new found popularity, was able to find a Christian group in the U.S. willing to build a hospital in Rushere. It was opened in October 1992 and was founded with a Christian constitution. Joan Hall had been a missionary with MAM in East Africa since the 1950s, and was brought in to be the hospitals's administrator in 1999.
President Museveni is still the patron of the hospital. We were lucky enough to meet the President at his home during our stay. It was an incredible experience to meet a man with such understated authority and such natural presence. It struck us all that he is comparable to Nelson Mandela. Like Mandela, he became president because of his long struggle against an oppressive regime, and like his South-African counterpart, he has a deep love and understanding of his country and its people.
We arrived in late December and set about arranging and filing the past ten years worth of patients' medical records into precise chronological order. The Christmas break included an unforgettable safari to Lake Mburo National Park and we saw in the New Year at Lake Bunyonyi on the Rwandan border. We returned to the hospital in early January, straight back into emptying out the hospital stores, a task that has needed doing for the past ten years.
To the delight of the hospital staff, we came across a cornucopia of useful equipment hidden away in the stores. Sterilising equipment, beds, sheets, drip-stands, test tubes, crutches and much more were uncovered in an operation comparable to an archaeological dig! An anaesthetic kit was discovered which was the last piece of equipment required for the opening of the newly refurbished operating theatre. We even came across a huge x-ray machine dating back to the 1950s. We are hopeful that we may be able to coax a medical museum into buying it.
As a team, we are on good form. We have done little driving over the last month and a half and, though we have thoroughly enjoyed having time to meet and get to know people, we are eager to hit the road again.
If you are interested in knowing more about the Kent2Capetown project, please visit their websitewww.kent2capetown.com. If you would like to know more about the work at Rushere hospital, please contact the MMA HealthServe Office, healthserve@cmf.org.uk
