CivilSocietyTA working with INGO and CSO learning from running a charitable health clinic in Uganda

Hope Clinic Lukuli is participating in the online discussions regarding availability of ARVs in Uganda (Hope Clinic's patients are not missing out, due to our network of supporters) and the ways to improve PMTCT accesss for pregnant women. We TWEET! In the meantime, we are very grateful to TheValueWeb for their ideas and to Sita for the new Strawbags website. The graphic skills of TheValueWeb and London designer, DeathBeforeDishonour will be delivering the Hope Clinic experiences at the International AIDS Society 2010 conference in Vienna in July.

List the things you know about plastic: • It is made from fossil fuels (oil) and so each new bag is from a finite resource • Governments encourage us to use fewer bags – some ban their importation • Shops help us change our habits by charging us for thin bags • Cheap, thin bags break and go in the bin • Things you put in the bin are burnt or buried – both are bad for the environment • Drop a bag on the ground and it blocks a drain or chokes an animal Remember what a responsible person should do? It is ‘Green’ and saves you money: Reduce the use of resources that are finite Re-use items, find a second or third job for things you own Recycle, efficiently, what can’t be re-used anymore Kinawataka Women’s Initiative is based in a village that has become a suburb of Kampala, in Uganda. As well as thin plastic bags blocking the drains - that are so necessary in fertile Uganda with two rainy seasons – the women found plastic drinking straws that had been used for locally made juices in a bag...

Helping People, Helping the Planet "At least I have my health” – a joke said for hard times in the US and Europe. In Uganda health is not so much a personal description of well-being but a day to day concern that requires nutrition, the time to visit the over-crowded and under-resourced government facility, or money to visit a non-government clinic. For women living in the Kinawataka village in Kampala, Benedicta Nabingi saw her retirement from over 20 years of public sector work as the start of her challenges. Benedicta and other retirees have looked at their households and watched the large houses being built around them, the city’s roads getting busier and new shopping centres built; covered with adverts for designer clothes, mobile phone companies and new types of soda drink. Around the village the green hills of Kampala are testimony to the rains that allow the countryside to feed a rapidly growing population – but in the urban areas the ‘shambas’ for growing food are being t...

http://www.volunteerabroad.com/listingsp3.cfm/listing/69114 Description: Hope Clinic Lukuli and Kinawataka Women's Initiative have formed a partnership to expand the number of women and households who can prepare and weave waste plastic drinking straws into lengths of 'material'. This material is then used to make mats and shopping/ sports bags to replace disposable plastic bags. All sale proceeds from the products are paid to the weavers/ bag makers. The volunteer post is to 'make this happen'. Support the marketing, liase with customers, help the women organise into production and finishing teams and create links to buyers in Europe and North America Highlights: - Living in Kampala, a friendly city in East Africa - Helping women in households on low income to generate their own earnings for food and education - Reducing waste that pollutes water sources and block rain drains (that otherwise lead to floods) - Supporting a philanthropic health centre to ...

Joyce Bbosa is an experienced midwife who described at her retirement how she has delivered the village with her own two hands. Joyce, then in her 50s, was working in a two room structure helping children with fevers – whether malaria or not – and helping scared young mothers living in Kampala away from their family support, at home in the village. Hope Clinic Lukuli grew from these two rooms by the work of a women-led committee of non-medics. Small actions by the people living in Lukuli village on the edge of Kampala brought child immunisation to the families; help with oral rehydration to manage the fevers; and access to HIV testing for the pregnant mothers and others to help reduce new infections. www.hcluganda.org Hope Clinic Lukuli has continued since 2000, and despite Joyce’s retirement in 2004, to become a new facility offering family planning and maternal health, admissions for deliveries, a laboratory and out-patients department. What makes it unusual is that the co...

On 2nd June the US Government delegates from countries implementing PEPFAR and related USG initiatives meet in Kampala. They are following the theme of Scaling Up Through Partnerships that will continue on the 3rd June with the HIV Implementers Conference. A Critical Barrier to Implementation has been the apparent reluctance for ‘larger’ organisations to engage with ‘smaller’ implementers. Just as general practice medical services are a network of small clinics, medium sized health centres and large hospitals, the provision of HIV services require mentoring and referral mechanisms. The barrier that Hope Clinic needed to, and with great struggle did, overcome was how to make the first contact and be heard by the best practice organisations. For the funders of these implementers, greater flexibility to share training, share materials or provide mentoring support would be a welcome lesson to learn when designing the next intervention. It is understandable that national or d...

Scaling Up Through Partnerships: Overcoming Obstacles to Implementation “The HIV Implementers conference has set June’s meeting in Kampala to help partners: - exchange lessons learned and best practices in the scale-up of HIV/AIDS programs - focus on building the capacity of local prevention, treatment, and care programs - enhancing quality - promote coordination among partners. Dialogue about future directions of HIV/AIDS programs, with a strong emphasis on: - implementation best practices, and - the identification of critical barriers”. Hope Clinic Lukuli is an example of partnerships between: a CBO that became an NGO; local village and city councils; the national Ministry of Health; Ugandan and international companies; and Uganda and international health NGO and development agencies. We say thank you to Patrick Mutabwire and Elizabeth Mushabe who were willing to hear about Hope Clinic's work and agre...

Hi from Hope Clinic, This link takes you to our webpage on community and to a link for a 5 minute news feature that appeared on Nation Television on 13th and 14th May. http://www.hcluganda.org/community.html The feature comes a week after the announcement by Dr Apuuli of the Uganda Aids Commission that the HIV Implementers conference will take place in Kampala. The conference is a global gathering of PEPFAR, Global Fund, UNAIDS, governments and international NGO. The theme this year is partnerships and how scaling up of services, particularly prevention, can be coordinated. The feature includes three of the clinic’s clients who are now peer educators talking about their HIV experience and how Hope Clinic has and continues to help them. In the film there are other references to/ images of: - The Ministry of Health/ National Medical Stores test kits for HIV coordinated by the USAID funded DELIVER project; - The Small Grants office of the US Embassy; - The NGO facility coordinated by ...

The Hope Clinic Lukuli continues to increase its linkages to the community level health providers and to be recognised by the city council and Ministry of Health as an important participant in health services provision. Having completed seven years since its foundation, and two years in the new premises, the clinic has a broad range of collaborations. The following are examples of public private partnerships in Makindye Division: Malaria treatment: Since May 2007, Hope Clinic Lukuli has been able to access the NGO facility for malaria treatment drugs. The new Artemisinin-based Combination Therapy (ACT) drug available in Uganda under the facility is called Coartem. It is provided in four dosage packages and Hope Clinic Lukuli is able to receive it free of charge and provide it to the clients. This means that although the clients still pay half a US dollar for the medical examination and $1.50 for the laboratory testing, the potential cost of Coartem from a drug shop (US$10) can be...

The recent months work at Hope Clinic Lukuli has reinforced the belief that creating linkages and using personal and professional contacts is often more effective and has greater long term impact than just paying over a sum of money. From a forum of other philanthropists, we found a health management expert, they visited Uganda at somebody else's expense but had time to visit the clinic. They brought two trainee doctors who provided ideas and encouragement and reference to an electives organisation. The funding is still important, but in case potential supporters don't want to give funds which they cannot monitor, they can be encouraged to advocate for the programme and use their skills. Many people have an experience or professional skill which to them is simple and easy to replicate elsewhere - but to you seems highly technical and very expensive to buy. The concept of Philanthropic Trustee is more active than a normal charity trustee which receives proposals and reviews ...

One aspect of the growth of Hope Clinic Lukuli has been realising that lots of good projects are set up and funded by bilateral donors and then close with the materials slowly depleting their stocks and the resource being lost. World Bank projects such as CHILD and NECDP in Kampala both had good materials, still admired by the Ministry of Health, but for which almost no copies remain for use. The FANTA project was running with USAID funding under AED a US company and its materials cover infant health and nutrition. I have made contact with the US base who referred me to: Robert KN Mwadime (MSc., MPH, Ph.D) Regional HIV/AIDS Specialist Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance (FANTA) Project Academy for Educational Development c/o Regional Centre for Quality of Health Care, Medical School, Mulago P. O. Box 29140, Kampala, Uganda. Tel: +256-41-530888 (w), +256-77-517438 (c) Fax: +256-41-876 He is based in Kampala, but has a regional remit, and so referred me to Samalie working in the Mi...

Their website says: "Engineering Ministries International (eMi) is a non-profit Christian development organization made up of architects, engineers and design professionals who donate their skills to help children and families around the world step out of poverty and into a world of hope ". What this means is that professionals in the design, architecture and construction field have realised that their skills can benefit other people and ensure that good ideas and intentions can be carried out with a cost effective and correctly designed and planned structure. They were working in Uganda on a larger project in Jinja town and met us in 2004 to review our very bad drawings for a new health centre. John Sauder and later, Chad Gamble, went away and came back with full AutoCad architectural sketches with dimensions, cut away of walls, specifications for roof construction and even plans for the latrines and soakpit. Before EMI invest their time and skills they have the understan...

Before I give you some information on Mango - I hope that readers don't confuse these posts as attempts to get commercial gain for Hope Clinic Lukuli's owners or the organisations referred to. Mango, for example, is a repository of posts and resources from accounting, administration and field staff around the world who are sharing their ideas and experiences. They don't get paid for it, no matter how much their good ideas are used or adopted. This blog is trying to follow the example set by Mango and GoodwillGallery where somebody who has developed an idea offers it to another person to save their time and effort - which means they can concentrate on their skill areas and perhaps share their ideas. As for the owners of Hope Clinic Lukuli - none of the eight of us take any money or financial benefits from the clinic's operations. (I had to amend that as I almost said benefits of any type. I must admit to a pride in managing to achieve this and a good feeling when the...

Kampala City Council is the District authority responsible for health service provision in the city centre and the surrounding residential areas. Our area of Lukuli Nanganda, in Makindye Division is therefore under its jursidiction and guidance. KCC are considering Hope Clinic Lukuli on two fronts, one as a Makindye Teenage Information and Health Centre similar to another one on the other side of the city, the other as part of KCC's response to HIV service needs. The HIV Focal Point person is Dr Sendagire and he is discussing with Dr Penninah and Ms Thayer of IDI about their coordinated development of services in the city. We shall see during June how we get on

Hi, The clinic started over six years ago when a set of friends agreed that a small community health clinic was struggling to continue to function and could be helped. An elderly and very dedicated midwife was tending to the needs of her patients and doing so with little pay or supplies of materials or drugs. More background can follow later. What has been nice about Hope Clinic Lukuli and its growth is that we have achieved it without any of the management committee being medics and with skills ranging from a small shop keeper to civil engineer, a local council member to a teacher, an accountant to a retired civil servant. The community, village, people around the clinic have alternative places to seek medical advice and treatment but choose Hope Clinic Lukuli and return to it with friends. The task of managing the growth between the eight of us on the committee has made very clear that lots of support in terms of materials, advice, best ways of acting and groups to work with alre...