Support for the “Little Lights Children Centre”, Kampala, Uganda

The project

Namuwongo is one of the poorest slums in Kampala, Uganda: the population is predominantly refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo, from Kenya and refugees from North Uganda.

In 2007, thanks to the initiative of a group of volunteers from Israel, the “Little Lights Children’s Center” was created, a project for educational and community development aimed at improving living conditions for children from the slums of Namuwongo. In fact, there are no public health facilities in the area, but only a increasingly large number of small private “clinics” offering services for payment, very often of poor quality. At the beginning, the only space available for examinations was the school veranda …

The aim of the “clinic”, located in the Namuwongo nursery school, is to treat the pupils and their families, and to improve the health of the population in the slums through formal sessions of health education and support to the parents.

In 2009, the “Little Lights Children’s Centre” asked World Friends for financial and professional support in carrying out their activities, aimed to:

• Provide free first-aid assistance and medical treatment in the clinic for children attending the school and their families
• Incorporate and encourage health-preventive actions for children and their families who have inadequate access to health structures.
• Provide hygienic-health education in an informal way to mothers, encouraging them to divulge this information in the community
• Cover the expenses of possible laboratory exams, diagnostic investigations, specialist visits and hospitalization for patients at the clinic (children)
• Facilitate free screening for women for the prevention of cervical cancer
• Introduce distance adoption for children at the school so they can access primary school
• Set up a group of 30 women for professional training to help them to start up small income-generating activities (crafts, dressmaking …)

Some data on the clinic:

• Treatment activities include around 250 patients weekly, to which must be added the comprehensive periodic activities carried out for the children at school.
• Currently, in addition to  the two Italian voluntary doctors, the personnel at the clinic consists of a nurse, working on a part-time basis, but the aim is to employ a full-time nurse to be able to cope better with home visits in the afternoons.
• The clinic presently uses two adjoining rooms in the school compound: one for registering patients and the other for examinations. The rooms are equipped with the necessary apparatus and furniture.

The weight of each patient is registered, and a schematic patient’s file is opened so as to gather also data of a socio-family interest. Mothers of children under 5 years are given a “clinical diary” which they must submit each time to register all treatments when they request health assistance in any institution whatsoever.

Anna dal Lago, a World Friends doctor resident in Kampala, works as a volunteer in the clinic.