A letter from our friend and brother in Christ Thad Cox, the American computer man working in Bunyoro-Kitara Diocese, Hoima, Uganda.
Dear Friends at St Luke's Church, Crosby, England.
I apologize for having failed to write for such a long time, but I have wanted to write this story for several weeks and the words just never came together until now. I pray that you are able to get past my poor writing to understand and feel what I am trying to say.
Yours in Jesus
Thad
HEALTH CARE NEEDS AND BLESSINGS IN HOIMA
Before I begin this story I would like to make a couple of points:
First: please understand that medical and hospital care here in Uganda is unbelievably different from anything that you, who are accustomed to medical-care in the United States or United Kingdom, would understand or accept. In your worst dream you cannot begin to imagine the appalling conditions, the poor level of professional care and the unavailability of even the most basic treatment and drugs that are accessible to over 99.9% of the people here in Uganda.
Second: the first part of this story will probably be very distressing to many of you. However, I pray that if you can get through the first part of the story (the description of existing conditions) you will find that it was worth your time to get to the end, where I pray you will see how our awesome God is moving, through others, to help his children here in Bunyoro-Kitara.
THE CONDITION OF UGANDAN HEALTH CARE
Health care in Uganda today
Here in Uganda there is a government-sponsored program called Universal Health Care, under which every Ugandan is supposed to be able to receive cost-free medical care. The truth of the matter is that this program just doesn't work. The central government, along with several other outside agencies, is beginning to spend a lot of money to upgrade the hospital buildings; however there is very little money available for anything else. The central government is responsible for hiring and paying the doctors and nurses needed to work in and staff the hospital. However, the central government has very little money available to actually pay the doctors, nurses and hospital staff, and there is also virtually no money available for the purchase of drugs and supplies, and for the maintenance of the hospital equipment (for example the only hospital x-ray machine is a 1950 vintage machine, which has been inoperable for several months).
Hospital Food: In the States everyone complains about hospital food; however here in Uganda each admitted patient is allotted a little over 1,000 Uganda shillings per day (about 58 cents a day) for hospital food by the central government. This 58 cents means the hospital will only provide each patient with a small portion of beans and posho (corn mush) for lunch and dinner.
Nursing Staff: Because of the lack of funds the nursing staff, which is very poorly and inconsistently paid, has been reduced so that each nurse is responsible for from 30 to 40 patients, and here in Uganda the nurses are not responsible for feeding and cleaning the patients. If this is done the patient must have a family member stay with them to do it. It is also not uncommon for a patient to have to provide the nurse with a gratuity in order to receive her help.
The Doctors: Government doctors are also very poorly and inconsistently paid. This is a condition which has resulted in each of the government doctors having opened their own private, for-profit clinics in the town where they refer the majority of their hospital patients. In these private clinics, if the patient has any money, they can talk with a doctor and buy the drugs, which the doctor has available to sell. Rumour has it that many of these drugs have come from the hospital's supply pharmacy. Note: This rumour may not be as much of a fact as the majority of the people here in Bunyoro-Kitara believe, because on the two or three occasions that I have personally been invited into the hospital pharmacy all of the shelves have been completely empty and the pharmacy refrigerator has been inoperable.
Drugs: Similarly, because the hospital has virtually no funds available for drugs, few of the needed drugs are available and all patients are required to buy the drugs, which their doctors have prescribed, which frequently their doctors are happy to sell through their own private clinics.
The prelude to my story
A couple of months ago a friend of mine, the Revd Ruben Kabaseke from Buhamba, came by Grace House to talk with me about a little two-year-old girl from his parish who had been admitted into the Hoima Hospital. The little girl had been seriously burned over most of her body by boiling milk. Burns are a particularly serious problem here in Uganda because the vast majority of the people here cook over an open wood fire, or the more affluent cook over a small, locally made, open charcoal cooker. Both of these methods of cooking are done at ground level and are both very easy for a small child to get into.
As a result of Ruben's visit we both went to the hospital to see if there was anything that we could do to help. I don't recall ever having seen anyone who had been so badly burned or who was in such pain.
The experience of my visit
In the past three and a half years I had been in this particular ward on many different occasions to visit and pray with many of our Christians. However, this visit was different, it was as though my eyes had been opened to the pain, suffering and helplessness of all of the patients and their families. This experience was distinctly distressing and painful. The little girl and her mother were both in terrible pain and I felt utterly helpless to do anything to bring them solace. To make matters even more difficult Ruben was in his collar and we were asked to visit with and pray for many of the other patients who were in the same ward as our little girl. This particular ward, the surgical ward, has beds for 30 people; however, on this particular day there were over 35 patients (five were lying on the floor). Of the other 34 patients there were six other children (aged one to five) who had also been seriously burned. There were four adult women who had been badly burned while cooking their family's meals.
There was one young woman (about 22 years old) who had been very badly burned all over her back, shoulders, head and face during a family dispute with battery acid. There was one little eight-year-old girl who was dying from some unknown disease or an adverse reaction to some sort of traditional medication that had caused her whole body, head to foot, to erupt in huge festering open sores. There was another beautiful seven-year-old girl who had fallen into a cooking fire during an epileptic seizure who had lost both of her hands. There was one young man (about 22 years old), who had been in the hospital, with an open compound fracture for nearly two weeks, who had not yet received any treatment, because he didn't have the money to send someone to a pharmacy to buy the supplies needed to set and secure his broken arm. Additionally there were two cancer patients who have since died, four victims of motor vehicle accidents as well as several other badly injured people.
The commonality between all of the patients was that they were all in great pain, they were all unbelievably poor, all of them were in dire need of help, which they were totally incapable of providing for themselves, and all of them were stoically and unbelievably quiet and subdued.
The conflict
I wondered, how was it possible that during my previous visits to the hospital I had failed to really see or acknowledge the astounding need of all of these people? How was it possible that I had never taken the initiative to try to do something other than to provide some help to the specific person that I had come to see? The need is so huge; what, of any value, could I ever hope to do to make a difference?
This particular afternoon I had only been in the surgical ward, additionally there was a men's ward, a women's ward, a children's ward, a paediatric ward, a maternity ward, a tuberculosis ward (primarily AIDS patients) and an outpatient clinic. After I had worried and worried over this obvious huge need for several hours I finally came to the conclusion that there was absolutely nothing of any value that I, on my own, could do. I then decided to talk with the Lord about the need and then to wait for him. The result of my talk with the Lord was an amazing sense of release and peace.
THE BLESSING AND LOVE OF OUR LORD
The answered prayer
Early the next morning as I was downloading our e-mail I found that I had received an e-mail from a very good friend in Pennsylvania. In her e-mail our friend told me that she had sent me $150 and that she wanted me to use it wherever I felt it was needed. Needless to say, this e-mail seemed to be the answer to my prayer. Later that morning I talked with the Revd George Hope and Sanny Bitehe (they work with me at the computer school) to find out whether or not they would be willing to help use the gift that I had just received to help the people in the hospital surgical ward who were most in need of help. Their unreserved eagerness to involve themselves in this new and very difficult ministry was overwhelming and that day the Lord's new work at Hoima Hospital began.
Sanny and George now go to visit the patients in the surgical ward three to four times a week. They have come to know the nurses who work in this ward (generally one nurse per shift) and the nurses now keep them informed as to who needs food, who needs drugs, and which of the patients have no other help or means. Now, thanks to the Lord, we are able to help provide those who are most in need with food, milk and drugs. And now all of the patients in the surgical ward look forward to the loving care, company and prayer support, which they know is coming to them from the Lord through Sanny and George.
You might ask yourself, "How far will $150 go when the need is so great?" Well, that's obviously a very good question and all I can really say is that I absolutely guarantee you that our Lord really does provide. Shortly after I had received the $150 gift another young woman who had heard how we spent the first $150 wrote to say that she decided to send us another $100. Several weeks later, just about the time that we were nearly out of money, a local businessman who I had helped with a computer problem gave us another 50,000 Uganda shillings; then one of the NGOs who are working here in Hoima gave us another 50,000 shillings for working on their computers; and then another local businessman who had heard about what we were doing gave us another 100,000 shillings to help our friends at the hospital. Yes, we really do have an awesome God!
Another health care need
Another health care need that has been in many of our prayers for several years has to do with our Diocesan Clinic, which is located about a quarter of a mile from St Peter's Cathedral. The Diocesan Clinic had been doing wonderful work for the poor people of Hoima, until it ran into severe financial difficulties about five years ago and was closed. I have ridden by this sad building several times a day for the entire three and a half years that I have lived here and it never ceases to sadden me to see the badly needed, but closed and deteriorating health care facility. It's very much like driving by a closed church building on a Sunday morning in a run-down inner city neighbourhood where the Lord's loving help is so badly needed.
Once again, the problem of finding the needed funding was far too big a problem for Bishop Wilson, for Bishop-elect Kyamanywa, for myself or for any of the other Christians here in Hoima. However, it wasn't too big a job for our Lord, Jesus Christ.
My second early morning answered prayer
Early one morning, a couple of weeks after I had received the e-mail telling me about the wonderful gift of $150 from my friend in Pennsylvania I received another truly awesome e-mail. This e-mail came to me from Bishop-elect Nathan Kyamanywa who was, at the time, working with our very good friends in Pennsylvania at Christ Church at Grove Farm. In this e-mail I was informed that God had moved a wonderfully faithful Christian at Christ Church to donate all of the money needed to refurbish and update our slowly deteriorating Diocesan Clinic building.
I had to read the e-mail several times before I could really accept and comprehend the fact that our Lord's timing had finally come and that he had indeed taken the first step in answering our prayer. It was an overwhelming experience to see how our Lord was working for his children here in Bunyoro-Kitara. To begin with, he had shown us the way to begin to help some of his most needy children in the Hoima Hospital and he had shown us that he would indeed provide. Now, he had once again answered our prayer, by touching the heart of one of his children in the United States, who in turn had lovingly supplied us with the means to rebuild and modernize our closed and derelict health Care Clinic. The Lord's methods and timing are truly awesome.
To begin with we had an empty shell of a building that had been closed for several years, which was quickly falling into a derelict state. Second, the Lord touched the Christians of Christ Church at Grove Farm in Pennsylvania to come to Uganda with a medical team made up of Africans and Americans to help us with our critical health care needs. Third, the Lord touched the hearts of nearly everyone involved with the sad picture of a closed health clinic in a place where the need is so overwhelming. Fourth, the Lord made it possible for our Bishop-elect Kyamanywa to travel to the States for a six-month period just prior to his forthcoming consecration. Fifth, the Lord made it possible for our bishop-elect to explain our people's need and to ask for the prayers of our friends in the States. Sixth, the Lord made certain that the person he had chosen was able to hear the message. Seventh, the Holy Spirit reached out and embraced our new friend's heart. Now, construction work is underway and, if the Lord is willing, the work on the Diocesan Clinic will be completed and ready for dedication in January of 2003.
My prayer now is that:
Finally, if you have any thoughts on what you can do to help the people of Bunyoro-Kitara with our health care needs or if you know of any organization or individual that would be in a position to help us find and finance a Christian doctor - or if you know of a Christian doctor that has been moved to give their gift of healing to God's children here in Africa please contact:
Bishop-elect Nathan Kyamanywa (of Bunyoro-Kitara Diocese) or Thad Cox (Bunyoro-Kitara Diocese) at bkdioces@infocom.co.ug or my brother in Christ John Morris of your Church.
I pray that you all will keep us in your prayers as you are always in our prayers. I also ask that you join with us in praise to the Lord for all of the mighty and awesome blessings that he is showering upon all of his children, you in the United States and UK and those of us here in Uganda.
The King will reply, "I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." (Matthew 25:40)
Yours in Jesus,
Thad
this page was last modified on 29 June 2002