In December 2016 two of our trustees, Liz and Michael Minton visited Uganda and the volunteer team at Makerere Palliative Care Unit. Here is a short report of their visit.
This was our 4th annual visit to meet the volunteers working with MPCU and led by Ivan and Liz Nabyre.
This year while Mulago hospital is being redeveloped the services have been relocated to three sites: Mulago, Kawempe,and Kiruddi hospitals. So the volunteers have been divided to produce three teams. We all met at Kiruddi for a morning reunion where we heard the experiences of the teams. There were, as ever, some complex patient problems where the volunteers had made valuable supportive relationships. It has been a difficult year for some because of the new arrangements and working with new staff at Kiruddi hospital which had only been opened this year.
We had the opportunity to join Liz Nabirye and see the new patient and family information material that the American Cancer Society have developed over the last year. Both Liz and Ivan have contributed to the project. This will be launched in February 2017.
A volunteer pig farm project to raise funds for their work has commenced with the building of the styes. 2017 will be a challenging year for the MPCU and volunteers with this new arrangement and the additional impact of there being no functioning radiotherapy service in Uganda (patients have to travel to Nairobi).