CARE Medical Centre: Extending care to the community 24/7
ISAA are excited with the process of our new CARE Medical Centre and look forward with anticipation to its opening by the end of 2010.The medical centre will seek to extend first class health care to the people of the surrounding Jinja districts. Our services will extend to offer health care to protect and promote the health within our local communities and the marginalised people groups within those areas. Our aim is to provide continuity of care, health promotion and education.
Then centre itself will consist of a General Practice, Admissions (both general and paediatric), Pharmacy, Laboratory, Pathology and Dental facilities, although none of this can take place without the support and donations from generous sponsors.
We are extremely thankful for the financial contributions and for the many medical supplies that have already been donated to ISAA by CBM Australia, of which much has already been distributed to local government hospitals in Jinja. Officers from the Ministry of Health loaded a large truck and a Ute with goods and medical equipment.
CARE Medical Centre will be the first of its kind in the district that will offer latest tech medical software to the doctors and staff at the Centre. This will enable them to store detailed patient histories, something that is not standard practice in Uganda.
Below are some of the kids in our care who were admitted with Malaria in a congested two room local medical clinic, two to each bed. The medical centre will help treat many children suffering with the deadly Malaria and/or Typhoid.
The Centre will also provide us with the opportunity to host volunteers and work with them in exchange of skills and training. This will provide these individuals with the unique experience of practising medicine in a third world country.
In saying all this, there is still so much to do and we really do, still require medical supplies and financial support. We want to be able to provide the best quality healthcare to disadvantaged children and marginalised people groups. This can only be achieved through the support and financial generosity of our donors.
Millennium Development Goals #4, #5 & #6
International Support Aid Australia is currently in the process of establishing a medical centre on the grounds of our children’s home in Jinja. This project is directly related to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the eight goals agreed to by all the world’s countries and leading development institutions as a blueprint to meet the needs of the world’s poor by 2015.
In particular, the establishment of a medical centre is directly linked to the following goals:
Goal 4 – Reduce child mortality;
Goal 5 – Improve maternal health; and
Goal 6 – Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.
The ability of countries to meet these three health-related goals is interlinked with their ability to meet the other MDGs relating to poverty reduction, literacy, gender equality and environmental sustainability and establishing a global partnership for development, with the achievement of one MDG impacting the others. Indeed, the three health-related MDGs are particularly important to achieve, as healthy communities are dependant upon healthy children and adults, who are able to lead productive, active lives.
Ill health increases household expenditure due to medical expenses, results in loss of productivity and income through inability to work, and sees children miss out on schooling through both ill health and needing to look after sick family members. These costs of ill health are crippling to those already living in poverty, and can also rapidly see others fall into the trap of poverty. It is for these and many other reasons that tackling the health-related MDGs are so important.
Despite the fact that the health care infrastructure in Uganda remains fractured and hollow, with many facilities reporting shortages of staff, drugs and other supplies, and with access to health care by those most vulnerable members of the community, such as orphans and vulnerable children, remaining limited, it is encouraging to know that the health-related MDGs are still achievable in Uganda by 2015.
ISAA is keen to assist the communities in which we work in meeting these MDGs on a local level, and is actively supporting the establishment of a medical centre in the community in which we operate. However, we can only do this with your help.
With the help of general public donations and corporate sponsors, International Support Aid can further develop our community medical centre and help to transform the lives of those whom we seek to help – the vulnerable, the orphans, the widows and the marginalised.
All donations within Australia for Development Projects of $2.00 or more are tax deductible.