Securing our Land for Primary Health Care Clinic

Back corner of our land looking down side boundary to front boundary tree by the road
the land extends to right of the picture

Part of the vision of our project, Yotkom Uganda is to assist local primary health care centre sustainability and increase capacity of these clinics to provide services to the people here who are in need. In line with this we are aiming to assist the local Bregma clinic , headed by Dr Vincent, to find a permanent home  Currently the clinic is significantly burdened with large rental costs. In 2003, when Andrew was working at St Josephs he had a vision to build a primary health clinic at the base of a rocky hill near the centre of town. This would provide a future home for the health professionals sponsored from the community to come back and work in . Up till now this land has been occupied by the family of John achola, a man significantly maimed by the rebels of the LRA.  Now we are looking to raise funds to build a clinic on the site to house the team currently working at Bregma clinic, one of whom is our sponsored clinical officer, richard yulam.It was exciting today to see the survey team mapping out the boundaries of the land . This is the first step in our Ugandan project, Yotkom, obtaining land title and being able to proceed with a building. Several lays of local bureaucracy have been encountered this week as we made our way through a 10 step check list leading to land title. we are half way down the list.!

Our local councillor was very supportive of the proposed clinic

Remarkably today, the man who sold Andrew the land, David Livingstone suddenly and unexpectedly  appeared next door and was able to assist the surveyors locate the correct boundaries and also act as a support to us. We have assisting us an architect/building project manager, Andrew who will help design the building on site. He has some great ideas. The photo below shows him at the front of the block with John Achola who currently lives in the hut on the land. The land seen in the background of the  picture is all our plot.(approx 2000m2)

The last few days we have also been setting up the medical soft ware program Best Practice in the bregma clinic. This was donated by the Software company in Australia and will be a great assistance to the medical professionals in the clinic, as well as allowing data recall and research in the future.

Last night YOTKOM UGANDA had its first ever general meeting where the management team got together to focus on our vision and values. It was so encouraging to listen to the feedback and ideas of the amazing team of Ugandans we have here and the sense of unity and purpose we have is very evident. We are all seeing so many opportunities and potentials in the future and very real benefits to the health care of the community as a result of our partnering together .