St. Francis Hospital - Uganda
St. Francis Naggalama Hospital, a 100-bed rural hospital in Uganda, is one of the newest members of Western Connecticut Health Network/Larner College of Medicine Global Health Program. Serving a population of 300,000, Naggalama has been a teaching hospital to medical students from all over the world. The faculty includes Ugandan physicians with specialties in Ob/Gyn, Pediatrics, Internal Medicine, and General Surgery. Naggalama also serves a large outpatient clinic population, and is known for its Palliative Care outreach program, run by the local palliative care team and overseen by Drs. Randi Diamond and Howard Eison from WCHN.
In a country with 86 percent of the population living in rural areas and 70 percent of the doctors practicing in the cities, people living in the rural areas are particularly underserved. Naggalama Hospital’s Palliative Outreach Program – which includes a team of specially trained nurses and spiritual leaders, with intermittent physician input – focuses on the rural populations for whom poverty and lack of transportation makes access to medical care of any type difficult. The team sees patients in a Palliative Care outpatient clinic session, and they travel to surrounding villages a few times each week to provide in-home care
The signing of the Memorandum of Understanding and subsequent preparing of the first group of global health elective participants was an exciting moment. We wanted to do it right from the beginning by assembling appropriate accommodations, implementing staff sensitization, and selecting focal persons to ensure participants’ smooth transition into our culture and way of life. Furthermore, the medical elective at St. Francis Naggalama Hospital was focused not only on providing clinical knowledge and experience, but also on broadening horizons through a unique cultural understanding that ultimately enriches medical training. We hope the shared experiences will make a lasting impact on participants by shaping their continued work in patient and community care.
Sister Jane Frances Nakafeero, Director St. Francis Naggalama Hospital