On Masaka

Since my last post, a mere 6 days ago, I’ve received a number of emails telling me that it’s time to update my blog! I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the fact that people are still reading my blog, as my own pathetic experience with this form of communication has been that I check the blog initially and then promptly forget to do so again, lose the link, etc. So, thank you, anyone reading this, for sticking with it. That said, I also didn’t realize I was writing for such a demanding crowd! I’ll try to post (at least briefly) on a more regular basis!

This past Wednesday, I conducted my first site visit outside of Kampala! Ian, Vijay, Paul and I set out in the late morning, heading towards the Masaka district, located about two hours south-west of Kampala. We drove right across the equator (don’t worry, I stopped to take tacky touristy pictures on the return trip) and through the lush green agricultural landscape of rural Uganda. The scenery in this part of the world is not to be believed. Especially towards the end of the rainy season, all one can see from a car window is hill upon hill of greenery; farmed land, wild local palms, and untamed bushes continue for miles. The road from Kampala to Masaka is one of the better throughways in the country, as it’s paved and without the potholes that plague many other routes, including local, intracity roads. Very small villages, which subsist largely by selling local produce to passerbys, appear sporadically but for the most part the area is undeveloped—until one arrives at Masaka.

After a quick lunch at a local hotel, the four of us drove to the Masaka Regional Referral Hospital, one of the better public, government-owned hospitals in the country. I should start by mentioning that the hospital is set atop a hill, providing the most spectacular view to all who work or reside there. Though hospital scenery obviously comes second to quality of patient care, Masaka is probably one of the more beautifully placed hospitals in the world.Upon arrival, Ian and Vijay waited for a doctor scheduled to speak with them about the Early Infant Diagnosis transport refund program while I went in search of a man named James, with whom I had been communicating by phone and who’s charged with overseeing the laboratory system at Masaka RRH. Without boring you with too much detail, I met James in the Out-Patient Department (OPD) and together we toured the Masaka lab, as well as the lab at Uganda Cares, an NGO that works separately from but in close collaboration with Masaka Regional. I spoke with about five different people (mostly lab technicians, nurses, and data gurus), all of whom helped me understand the equipment in the lab, whether or not it’s functional, what the patient flow looks like when the machinery is working and when it’s not, patient numbers, system failure, etc. Over the course of three hours, I managed to acquire a reasonably good sense of the hospital’s needs and causes of equipment malfunction, and began brainstorming possible policy solutions. After reacquainting with Ian and Vijay, the four of us began the trip back to Kampala. We stopped twice on the return trip—first at a roadside stand to purchase bananas, avocados, jackfruit, and a small berry that I’d never tried before that tasted as though it were a hybrid of a cranberry and a blueberry! (All of my purchases combined cost me about $1.75.) And of course, we also stopped at the equator, where I took the below picture, with one foot planted firmly on the northern side of the equator, and the other firmly resting on the southern.