On June 8^th, Dominic Tumsuwigye from the Kampala Kolola RC presented at our weekly meeting, the achievements of the health teams at the Rushooka Maternal Health Clinic since the health centre commenced operations in October of 2020.

 

The project has been a fabulous success.

 

Firstly, lives have been saved because mothers with difficult pregnancies were able to access the surgical services at the Centre as opposed to travelling for hours over poor roads to get to the District Hospital.

 

Secondly, the Centre, which previously was classed as a level # 2 health centre, has been elevated to a level # 4 centre and now qualifies for government operational funding to enable it to continue providing sophisticated medical assistance to the people in its catchment area, including surgeries and diagnostic services previously only available at the District Hospital.

 

Thirdly, the experience of the Centre to date has demonstrated the great benefit of the new laboratory capability at the Centre.  This has led to the ambition to increase the laboratory services at the Centre to improve diagnostic capabilities.  This ambition will present us with an opportunity to help with the acquisition of additional laboratory equipment to build that capacity.  Our club was the international partner for the last stage of the Rushooka project, which involved the acquisition and installation of medical equipment for the surgery and the laboratory and  additional training for the outreach teams at the Centre.  Hopefully we will be able to play a similar role as the Centre builds capacity.