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.