POWER

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The hospital relies on vital medical equipment that needs electricity. That means when there is a power cut – or “load shedding” as they say here – the machines don’t work. There's no oxygen, no suction, no automatic blood pressure cuff. The incubators keeping the early and small babies warm also stop functioning and night time nursing care and overview is nearly impossible in the pitch dark.

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In 2015, with the generous help of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health Global Links program, we installed power inverters in both the Children’s hospital and the Neonatal unit at the main hospital, to provide 8-12 hours of backup to both newborns and children. But the natural Ugandan environment is tough on equipment, and these machines are unfamiliar to staff and difficult to maintain, so they have broken repeatedly and are now beyond repair. 

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As with all our projects, our goal is long-term and therefore maintenance of equipment and staff training are clearly going to be key and need more investment for the future. That is why Power remains an ongoing and not yet completed project for us.

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During our Chair's trip to Jinja in January 2018 we investigated several new options for restoring reliable back-up power to these units - watch this space!!