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Maranatha Health Uganda continues to thrive

 

Its been an extremely productive and positive time at Maranatha Health in Uganda recently, with much learning and reminders of how fantastic and capable the MH staff team are! Many of you would know that Michael and I (Kim) have moved back to Australia for the birth of our twins (!) this year, which after only a year of running the organisation, had the potential to be a challenging time for our team in Uganda. However, over the last few months we have seen the staff step up and tackle the new levels of responsibility with determination and ease. Our now 6 person management team in Uganda is doing a fantastic job of keeping the place running well, ensuring staff are managed well, putting out fires before they turn into blazes, and consulting us over skype and email regularly to ensure we are all on the same page!

Some highlights of the past few months have been:

• The employment of Francis Kadaplackal to step in and support our administration team and oversee the capacity building program in our absence. Francis is an Indian born Belgium resident who has an enormous variety of abilities and skills who has worked as a University lecturer across Europe in areas of Business Admin and Philosophy. He is an incredible blessing to our organisation and we feel extremely privileged to call him a part of the MH team.
• The recruitment of both a local Ugandan doctor part-time, as well as some strong interest from a number of Australian trained medics to work at MH in the following 6 months.
• Permission from the Ministry of Health to establish a comprehensive HIV treatment service at MH - this is an exciting step for us and a service we have been keen to offer since the early days in Kamwenge! It will require even more staff, more space, some increase in funding but we are excited to embark on this new area, especially after experiencing the limitations of other service providers around us.
• The construction of the MH clinic playground, for the not-so-sick-children who spend time at MH! It's rare to have community play spaces for children in rural Uganda, and we were quite excited to create this one :) Thanks to everyone who contributed ideas for this!

Capacity Building
Our capacity building program has also been a source of encouragement and new beginnings! We are continuing to work closely with our 'prototype' clinic called 'Hope Again', and in partnership with the clinic have recently successfully recruited  both a senior clinical officer and senior administrator. Both of these staff members have had a few weeks of on-job training and preparation at MH with our team, and are now working full-time for Hope Again with our continued support and input. While there are many challenges to working with another organisation with its own work culture and values, we continue to learn so much from this testing phase and continue to find out what ingredients are necessary for a successful clinic! 

1st Anniversary
Over the coming weeks, the team in Uganda will be celebrating our 1 year anniversary of opening the doors to patients in our Fort Portal clinic. In typical MH Uganda style, we will be throwing a big party to celebrate this wonderful milestone! It is quite amazing to think in only 1 year the clinic has become a centre of excellence with over 30 staff, which offers an extremely high quality of care for the community and has become a fantastic training ground for the establishment of our capacity building work. We are amazed at the abundant blessings that God seems to shower on us at MH - to ensure we have the financial support to do this crucial work, our generous and hardworking base of supporters in Australia, our team of dedicated workers in Uganda, with always the right people coming along at seemingly the right times. Thanks to all of you who have made this possible!

Speaking in Australia
Although busy whilst in Australia, we do have some available time and if you are interested in having Michael and/or I come and speak to your church, community or club about our work and potential ways that you can be involved, please don't hesitate to get in contact with our office at contact@maranathahealth.org. If we aren't available for some reason, MH Australia staff, Keren and Liesl, would be more than willing to come and speak to your group!

Kim and Michael Findlay

 

 

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