An auditor with Bowers Turyazayo, Finance Manager (rt)

In the past month or so we have been blessed with many visitors which reflects the wide range of activities run by Kisiizi.

Colleagues from AMREF ran a plastic surgery camp with our theatre team helping patients with cleft lip, cleft palate etc.  Auditors from Carr Stanyer Sims in Kampala joined us for a week of intense paperwork to review our finances with our accounts staff led by our Finance Manager.

We are trying a new link with Vives University in Belgium who have allocated 3 nurses on a degree course to Kisiizi for about 3 months.  Their tutors have recently visited and the link has got off to a good start.

We also welcomed partners from Holland, working with the Dutch charity Dorcas.  We have had a link with them for decades as they have helped us with a child sponsorship programme and we were delighted to welcome them again together with their regional office manager from Nairobi.

Thank you to Jamie’s Fund

To add to the multi-national visitors, the team from Mental Health Uganda who visited included an expert from Cameroon who works in Hungary and an Englishman as well as the Ugandan lead.  Their feedback was very encouraging.  Kisiizi is the only non-governmental unit offering in-patient mental health services and this team have visited all the government institutions as well as Kisiizi and report that our service stands out very positively.  Since their visit in November when they conducted their assessment, we have received the Mental Health Vehicle from Jamie’s fund and we are looking forward to receiving the final architect’s drawings for the new ward at the end of April.

Ildiko, Sam and Sharon

One dream for many years has been to add Culture and Sensitivity testing to the range of services offered by our Laboratory.  We are very grateful to our friends from Countess of Chester hospital who came out for a very busy fortnight to set up our new microbiology lab.  More Photos of microbiology lab.

Dr Ildiko, Consultant Microbiologist with Sam, Infection Control Lead and Sharon, senior Laboratory Scientist, had worked very hard to prepare much equipment to ensure the launch of the new service went well.  Kisiizi had also prepared with renovation of a room to create the new Microbiology Lab and sorting out autoclaves and safety cabinets to do the work.  The team were very surprised when they looked down a microscope at the first sample and saw Tetanus organisms – not such a common finding in Chester!  Clinically it has affirmed clinical diagnoses e.g. a child of 7 on the ward with a clinical diagnosis of typhoid grew the germ on culture and, for the first time, we could see what its antibiotic sensitivity pattern is (it was resistant to ciprofloxacin but sensitive to ceftriaxone for all you medics). You can see that his temperature took a while to settle though he was clinically improving within about 3 days.

Sam, Dr. Alex (WHO visitor) and Dr. Robert, Consultant Surgeon

To add to the fun, we welcomed 2 representatives from World Health Organization here to review our new Surgical Unit-based Safety Programme led by Dr. Gabriel Okumu, our senior surgeon.  A  small party celebrated the launch of the programme which is supported by Johns Hopkins University in USA working with WHO.
See our other WHO activities

TRIPS

The main risk to health for our Staff is probably malaria and road traffic accidents so we do appreciate those of you who pray for our teams going out for various activities.  Roads are sometimes in poor repair though it is now encouraging to see the main road from Kampala to R

Moses Mugume & Ian Spillman

wanda/Congo being worked on properly and quite a few stretches are now fine.  There are even rumours that our own murram (gravel) road stretching 18 miles to the nearest tarmac may be done in the next year or two or three…. we’ll see!

Moses Mugume, Senior Hospital Administrator, and Dr. Ian Spillman, Medical Superintendent accompanied Bishop Patrick Tugume, the Chairman of the Board of Governors to Kampala for a rapid trip recently to meet the Acting Managing Director of the National Social Security  Fund (NSSF).  The meeting was very helpful and constructive helping to find a way forward relating to some unexpected issues that had arisen out of the blue for Kisiizi.

The Management Committee also managed to “escape” from Kisiizi to have two days together to focus on Strategic Planning for the next five years.  We went to beautiful Lake Bunyonyi and it proved a very valuable time.  We are now putting together the details ready for a meeting of the Board on May 21st.