The Luwero District, and Kiwoko Hospital

Kiwoko Hospital in Luweero is a beautiful rural hospital located just under two hours North from Kampala. The hospital is remarkable. It started as a clinic, initially under a tree, aiding the 1986 war orphans, especially children and adults in the war-stricken Luweero triangle, where many people were killed during the civil war.

It has now grown to be a 25-acre compound, employing over 300 staff and offering a wide range of medical services. They have only 8 doctors to service a catchment area that is half the size of Northern Ireland.

The hospital largely draws patients from the immediate population of approximately 50,000 people within a radius of approximately 5 miles. In addition, many emergency patients come from a much wider population – travelling up to 20 or more kilometres over very rough terrain, either by motorbike or on foot to seek treatment. This is especially so for women who experience difficulties in labour. They can travel for many hours to seek specialist help from Kiwoko Hospital.

The Luweero region has approximately 70,000 people who are HIV positive

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ISIS’s Development Programmes at Kiwoko Hospital

We work with Kiwoko staff and local communities to assist families to be better able to sustain their long-term needs. Our support ranges from community based health care to tertiary health care initiatives in the grounds of the hospital itself.

Reducing Infant and Maternal Mortality
Assisting HIV+ Parents to Sustain Their Families
Community Based Health Care Programmes



Reducing Infant and Maternal Mortality

Thus far, our most comprehensive initiative with Kiwoko Hospital has been the development of staff at the hospital so that they have the capacity to treat neonates, and to train local Mums to care more effectively for their babies. The aim of this programme is to reduce infant mortality by developing staff skills in working with these clients. Elements of this project include:

• Training around 200 medical staff in Neonatal Resuscitation (American Academy of Pediatrics Programme), and we have also run train-the-trainer programmes so that Ugandans can run the course in future.
• Sending specialist trainers (neonatologists, NICU nurses, pediatricians) to the hospital to train staff in month-long blocks, and developing that training material with teams of specialists in Seattle, USA.
• Supporting and encouraging nurse training within Uganda (upgrading staff qualifications).
• Provision of an email medical advisory service to provide advice on specific patients, using teams of medical specialists.
• Working with staff at Kiwoko Hospital to develop protocols, policies and procedures for patients with specific medical conditions.
• Assisting babies and Mums in imminent danger, with emergency transport to specialist hospitals, or funding for basic needs whilst in hospital.
• Funding for construction of a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).
• Collection of medical equipment and supplies
• Funding for a range of costs associated with running the unit.

In order to reduce maternal mortality, and also assist in our goal of reducing infant mortality in the district, we are now beginning work with the Maternity Department to assist them in a similar manner to that mentioned above with the NICU.

To read about how the work of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit helped one family in Luwero, please click here.

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Assisting HIV+ Parents to Sustain Their Families

We also assist the hospital with their development programme which supports people living remotely with HIV/AIDS to develop self-sufficiency and be able to provide for their families in the longer term. Most of these people are parents who are supporting up to 7 children, and assisting them ensures that these children do not become just another statistic as one of the 2 million AIDS orphans in Uganda. Our work in this area includes:

• a nutrition programme to enable parents to become physically able to (i) work their own land and (ii) access an ARV programme at the hospital;
• support for community workers to visit families in the district and encourage declaration of HIV status to reduce incidence of HIV in the future and allow treatment to occur;
• support for parents seeking treatment, to enable them to get over opportunistic infections and continue to support their families.

We also have a small welfare component to this programme, assisting 30 AIDS orphans with school fees – these are children of parents on the programme who have passed away.

To read more about parents living with HIV/AIDS and how ISIS’s support assists, click here.

To read more about children living with HIV/AIDS in Luwero and how we all have a responsibility to help these kids, click here.

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Community Based Health Care Programmes

In order to reduce parent mortality we assist people living with diabetes in the region, by subsidising the costs of running a clinic to assist them with treatment, daily living skills, and ongoing management of their illness.

We also provide support to the hospital’s community based health care initiatives, which assist people living remotely to manage their health, families and kids. This has included providing including establishing a ‘mobile clinic’, a 4WD truck used for community training, health work and outreach, and providing training for staff, either by supporting additional qualifications or by directly running training (such as neonatal resuscitation, radiography and radiology training for staff).

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