By Liz Namukwaya | Project Member
Please receive warm greetings from our team!
We are delighted to once again be able to share with you updates from our work in the last 3 months.
1. Patient care
Uganda had another upsurge of COVID-19 infected people with the coming of the delta variant into the country and as a result of this we had a lockdown at the peak of the second wave from mid-June up to the first week of August 2021. During this time public transport was banned as well as inter-district movement except for special cases of illness and other emergencies. Because of the big numbers of patients with COVID-19 in hospitals, patients with other conditions stayed away from hospital for fear of getting COVID-19. More than half of our team members and their families had to go off duty because they had contracted COVID-19 but they been vaccinated and recovered well. As a result of this our patient load was less than the preceding months and we were able to review and care for 26 patients and their families with 124 physical contacts and 108 phone contacts. The majority of the physical contacts were carried out before the lockdown and most of the phone contacts were during the lockdown. Phone contacts helped the team to follow up patients who had been discharged, to provide bereavement support to families, and to offer continuity of care in the community for those who could not access hospital due to the of lack of public transport, and those who were afraid of contacting COVID-19. It has been a rough 3 months for health care workers and patients seeing many colleagues and friends die of COVID-19.
Using phones to support patients and their caregivers has been essential during this time. In addition we were able to use a private car from our partner Cairdeas IPCT for our staff who use public transport to enable them to get to work . Both the telephone contacts and the fuelling of the car were made possible because of the donations you make as well as the extra support we got from the GlobalGiving team. With your donations we have also been able to buy more personal protective equipment and sanitizers to ensure safety of the team. Our team and the patients are very grateful for your very generous contributions.
Below we share with you some reflections from the patient care
Our volunteers Ronald and Vicky and their coordinator Toko reflect on the care they provided for a child during the last 3 months and how it impacted on them as caregivers.
12 year old Patrick (not his real name) was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, 4 months prior to our team’s first visit and he was commenced on chemotherapy. By the time our team started reviewing him as an inpatient on the ward he had completed 6 cycles of chemotherapy and was referred to us for pain and holistic symptom management - especially for painful bedsores.
Patrick’s father died when he was 3 years old and his mother left him with his aunt when he was still a toddler, since that time he has stayed with his aunt and sibling Jane (not her real name). We worked with a multidisciplinary team of doctors, nurses and volunteers and have been able to visit him regularly and the medical team has managed his pain. As volunteers we became very interested and concerned with his psychosocial needs which were causing a lot of distress to both the patient and family members.
As a group of volunteers we see our role as one of bringing hope, peace and harmony to both the patient and the family. We have tried to do this through continuous visits to this patient that resulted in good rapport with him so that he was able to open up and share his concerns and worries with us. We also tried to reach his mother through phone calls.
He expressed a desire to go back to school and concerns about the costs of medical care: “I was in form five, I want to go back to school, but all the moneys have been used up paying for hospital bills. We are now financially constrained due to medical expenses this is one of my worries, my aunt is no longer working and how are we going to push on with medical expenses?”
It has been heart breaking to hear him say, “I want to see my mother, who deserted me when I was three years old, she has never visited me since that time, my older sister Jane got her contact I have tried it several times but no one is picking it”.
Our attempts to reach his mother have not been successful, and this really saddened us as caregivers, but our team have supported him with psychosocial support and counselling and also with funds for food and basic needs and gave him a photo of himself which was one of his wishes.
We were encouraged when he said “Thank you for loving me, when I wanted to see myself you took my picture and you also gave us some money to buy eggs and chicken. I never knew basawo (health care workers) can also be your friends, I thought they just give injections. I have new friends who are part on my family - indeed you are a Godsend”
The family also keeps on appreciating the team, “Thank you for being there for us in this trying time”.
We are grateful for the opportunity to make some difference to Patrick’s life. Thank you to our donors for supporting our work.
2. Education & Training
2.1 Training of undergraduate medical students and postgraduate students
In the last 3 months, we have trained 14 undergraduate medical students in palliative care from the Islamic University in Uganda, 2 postgraduate students from Family Medicine and 3 Internal Medicine post graduate students of Makerere University. Training programmes were also curtailed by the COVID-19 upsurge and lockdown. Two students made these remarks following the training: “Initially I thought this specialty was only for cancer patients or dying patients but I have appreciated that this is a very important level of patient management, it deals with the human aspect of people”
“I have learnt a lot during my stay at the palliative care unit. For example it has changed my ideology that I had about palliative care, secondly I have learnt to care for a patient as a whole other than only the medical aspects”
2.2 Training of health care workers
We had 9 international students from several African countries who were attending a palliative care health professionals’ course at Hospice Africa Uganda come on a one day placement to get an exposure to hospital based palliative care.
In collaboration with our partners Cairdeas IPCT and Peace Hospice Adjumani we also trained 32 health care workers in Adjumani as part of our project Titled; Transforming, empowering communities and health systems to address health related suffering in host and humanitarian settings through capacity building and integration in Adjumani and Obongi districts.
3. Online learning and discussions:
In this period, we have attended a number of online discussions that included;
4. Research and research related activities
Thank you so much for taking time to read our updates, we will be sharing regularly and for more information about our work please free to contact us on; info.pcerc@gmail.com
God bless you all #stay safe
By Grace Kivumbi | Project Administrator
By Julia Downing | Project Leader
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