Message from Solomon

Hi Ruud,I hope all is well with you , your family and all my sponsor friends. This is my second week in Masaka;it is more developed than Ishaka.Though I have not toured the town fully as yet, I have noted a few things which makes the place better, for example, there are several internet  cybercafés, several supermarkets, tourist class hotels with swimming pools and many more.

The majority of the people of Masaka are the Baganda by tribe; they are as friendly as the Banyankole of western Uganda. The staple food is matoke once again!, but there is also much fish(my favorite).Food and housing is slightly more expensive; probably because it is close to the capital city(Kampala).

Noting the change in dialect, we have to readjust to get to know a few Luganda words to communicate with the patients and also to find our way around the area.

The Masaka Regional Referral Hospital is a government facility serving the districts of Masaka,Ssembabule,Kalangala,Rakai,and Lyatonde.The hospital was established in 1927by the Buganda Government and has a bed capacity of 330.We were made to understand it was turned into a government district hospital in 1966 and later on turned into a Regional Referral Hospital in 1995;but unfortunately since the conversion to a referral hospital the infrastructure, equipment and funding have not been adjusted to cope with the new mandate. As such, there is overcrowding in all the units and this has affected the quality of services offered. Being the only Government Hospital in Masaka District, it serves as  a district hospital as well as the Health Center IV for Masaka municipality. There are more than 200 health workers and 17 specialists handling approximately 1000 patients per day!.

The class was divided into small groups of 5 students and distributed into the several units; this is to facilitate effective rotation. I was chosen as the group leader in the medical ward rotation; meaning I have to make sure I know the entire patient in the ward and assign them for clerking by the students, then during the ward rounds we present them to the senior consultant (physician).

 As mentioned earlier, the wards are crowded and many of the in patients happen to be HIV positive; as you may be aware, it is Masaka town which was hardest hit by the disease during the early times of the disease discovery in Uganda. This means that we see very many of disease conditions; and we are very lucky to have willing specialists who go teaching us bed by bed on all patients; imagine on major ward round days(Monday,Wednesday,Friday) we start at 9am and finish at around 7pm non-stop, no lunch or tea break!.Lacking some equipments we are taught on how to improvise, for example ,there was this patient who had pus filling one half of his chest after suffering and receiving treatment for TB;there was no apparatus to do underwater seal drainage and the patient could not afford(most patients in medical wards are actually very poor and pathetic states, and even worse is that often they are neglected with no attendants),so the physician had to improvise  one using intravenous giving set, a plastic fluids bottle and a large borehole cannular inserted directly into the chest held with strappings;about 3ltrs of pus was drained and the patient relieved.

   Every morning on the week days we first have 1hr lectures on the time tabled clinical subjects; this is from 8am to 9am before we break and head to our respective allocated units to do the ward rounds. This tight schedule makes the week move very fast,infact it is only on Friday evening and  Saturday that we have a chance to wash our clothes, room cleaning and probably visit town which is approximately 1km away(walking distance);that is why am able to access the internet, actually more easily than it was at Ishaka.

Just wanted to let you know that I'am okay and enjoying my studies more than it was in Ishaka.

I wish you all the best of times. Bye.

                                                                            Solomon.