After lunch the two groups joined up for a tour of a local hospital. This large teaching hospital, associated with Makerere University, is the one which most locals are referred to for problems that cannot be dealt with at small local clinics. The maternity ward alone services up to 100 deliveries per day and when we visited this ward we saw many waiting moms in various stages of labour. My sister, an obstetrician can tell you that this visit made me somewhat squeamish. I specialize in teaching and leave the medical stuff to her. We had many nurses in our group, however, and this tour was streamlined for them.
The conditions at the hospital were far inferior to western standards and it certainly makes me more appreciative of the benefits of our health care system. What struck me the most about the tour, which also included a cancer ward and a burn unit where we saw many burn victims, whom we had been told were suffering from deliberate acid burns, was the lack of sound. Obviously many, many people were in pain but they suffered in silence. One can only imagine what they were feeling and we were also told that in most cases they do not receive pain medication due to lack of funding for this. Apparently, the government funding for health care is based on a model of $4 per day per person. That doesn't go very far!
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| Mulago: A teaching hospital in Kampala. |
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| The team enters this busy teaching hospital for a guided tour. |
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