Jinja Children’s Hospital (affectionately known as Nalufenya) serves a population of around 200,000 children. 10,000 patients are admitted to the hospital every year and 4,000 babies are born there every year. Most of the paediatric patients and their families live in villages remote to Jinja and consequently arrive at the hospital late and quite poorly. 

 

To try and meet this demand, there are a handful of intern doctors, a couple of fully trained paediatricians, approximately 12 full time nurses and 8 clinical officers.

 

There are separate malnutrition and neonatal wards, and an emergency ward for the sickest patients. On average, one child and one baby die every day in the hospital; the biggest killers are malaria, malnutrition and bacterial infections.

 

The myriad of challenges that the dedicated staff face include shortage of personnel, equipment and medicines - something we are striving to help with!