Centre of excellence for newborn care in Uganda

A centre of excellence is not just about the physical infrastructure and buildings. Whilst this fundraising project has traditionally asked for support for these crucial things, we want to show you all our other activities that together create the centre of excellence we strive to achieve. 

Some babies who are admitted in our specialist neonatal unit in eastern Uganda either have no mother or their mother is unable to provide the breastmilk they need. There are no real alternatives for most of these tiny babies who are often also born too soon. Just like donated blood, donated human breastmilk is the norm in most high resource settings and we are excited to say that we are not far behind in Mbale. 

Here is our Breastfeeding Specialist, Goret, with six full jars of liquid gold (donor human beastmilk) from six newly screened mamas, ready for pasteurisation and freezing in our milk bank One of our concerns about opening the Milk Bank was not having enough donors. Two months after opening our Milk Bank and we have been overwhelmed by the generosity of our donor mamas. Goret counsels all our mamas in the neonatal unit on the importance and techniques of #breastfeeding every single morning and everyday new mamas come forward to help others. These donor mamas show incredible effort, commitment, dedication and generosity to provide milk, not only to their own baby but also to a baby in need. Life in the neonatal unit is challenging and these mamas have shown that hope, goodness and life can still prevail in these difficult times. Our heartfelt appreciation, thanks and gratitude to all the mamas who have donated breast milk.

We need your donations to enable us to keep paying Goret's salary. Every little counts. $15 will pay for one days salary, $100 will pay for a week. Please help continue to support this essential service.