Centre of excellence for newborn care in Uganda

          It is an amazing 7 years since we joined together in partnership with Mbale Regional Referral Hospital in eastern Uganda, to open the doors of the neonatal unit! And we haven’t looked back or stopped since!

          Our admissions have rocketed from around 100 sick and small babies a month to almost 300 a month. Alongside our mortality has plummeted from 52% to just over 10%. To put that into numbers, we are now saving the lives of over 1,100 babies a year who would otherwise not have made it! In fact since we started our project we have treated almost 18,000 newborn babies. 

          Our skilled team work hand in hand with the hospital team, training up new team members and leading life saving newborn care. Alongside this we continue to train medical and nursing students and healthcare workers through short attachments to the neonatal unit. We still regularly deliver our newborn care training courses across hospitals across eastern Uganda. And everyday we push the boundaries of what is achievable in this low-resource setting. We run a 10-bed high-dependency care unit, perform bedside brain scans, lung ultrasounds and heart scans everyday. 

          Whilst we are always delighted to share the successes we achieve with you, we realise that none of this would be possible without your generosity and support. In reality, we are overwhelmed in an incredibly small space. Our high-dependency area should have 2 beds in, not 10 and our ward which has the capacity for 20 patients is filled with up to 100 at any one time. 

          Our babies are some of the most vulnerable in the world and we need more support to achieve our dream of building a new home for the team. Our designs for a neonatal unit have been developed specifically for our uniquie challenges in Uganda such as high patient numbers, low staffing levels and regular challenges with power and water. Until it is built, we will continue to suffer.

We hope that you can help us achieve our dream.

This was my first pregnancy, and despite my sickle cell disease, I managed to carry my pregnancy up until early in my 3rd trimester. By this time I was an inpatient in the gynaecology ward, where I was receiving multiple transfusions for my sickle cell crises. At 31 weeks of gestation, I went into preterm labour, which is a risk for mothers with sickle cell disease. I delivered my twins weighing just 1200g and 1300g. My two tiny babies were quickly rushed to the neonatal unit and immediately put on breathing machines (CPAP).

Sadly my 2nd twin was diagnosed with a heart condition where the blood was not flowing correctly in his heart (PPHN) and this further made his condition detoriate. The doctors tried to give some medicines but all was on vain and my small boy breathed his last breath on day 3.

My surving twin was also not stable and on day 4 was diagnosed with a small whole on the heart (PDA). This made me more worried and anxious and triggered another sickle crisis. I was rushed to another ward for management and my mother took over caring for this surviving twin. It was still a hard battle because this small boy got an infection and kept on having episodes of apnoeas (stopping to breath) and this made my mother have sleepless nights. The doctors kept changing medicines for my small boy and finally he responded to meropenem, but it was really expensive for my family as it wasn’t available in the hospital. We were however really thankful for a donation of the drug caffeine in the neonatal unit to help him remember to breathe. With these drugs, together with the CPAP, he began to improve.

My small boy was on the breathing machine for 4 weeks. During this time I received over 20 blood transfusions for my sickle crisis. I became so unstable, weak and my breastmilk reduced so much, that I didn't have enough breast milk for my baby. I was assisted by screened donor human milk which my mother used to feed my baby with. If all that wasn’t enough, my mother then also developed malaria and she become weak and couldn't manage to give the 2 hourly feeds to my baby. Thankfully, she was supported by the staff on the neonatal unit and other good mothers on ward to help monitor and feed my little boy.

After a period of 7 weeks of battling and struggling to save the life of my small boy, my mother, my baby and I are going home. We send our sincere appreciation to the doctors and nurses in the neonatal unit who worked tirelessly to help my baby survive.”