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Rotary Club of Great Britain provide doctors on short-term attachments for understaffed hospitals in various locations
abroad, through the Rotary Doctor Bank Project. Rotarian Victor de Lima, from the Currie-Balerno Club, undertook one such attachment in Uganda for a two-month period in 1999, the facilitating Club
in the host country being the Rotary Club of Kyambogo in Kampala, Uganda. He served as a relief doctor at Kamuli Mission Hospital, Busoga Province in Central Uganda.
Victor's proposal to establish an internal telephone network for the hospital was gratefully accepted by the hospital
administration, and our Club raised the necessary funds for this purpose, through a Rotary Matching Grant Project in association with RC Kyambogo-Kampala, who oversaw the efficient installation of the
network.
The main network was finally opened in February 2002, and additional funds have since been utilised in 2003 for fax and computer equipment, enabling e-mail and fax communications for the hospital.
Medical, nursing and technical staff live within the hospital grounds and communications in 1999 were by way of messengers
between various hospital departments. This involved significant delays, occasionally in critical situations, such as summoning a doctor to an emergency, or requesting blood supplies to theatre.
The 160-bed district hospital serves a population of 330,000 and has four wards - medical, surgical, paediatric and
maternity, as well as busy out-patients department, operating theatre, laboratory, pharmacy, etc.
There is also a Nurses' Training School and AIDS Counselling Centre. The range of medical conditions seen is huge, and typical of that in a third world country.
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Sister Gilder (Hospital Superintendent), Dr Stella (Medical Superintendent), and members of the Kyambogo Club, photographed at the hospital on the day
the system became operational. (Vincent Agola is on the right. |
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