Kitgum Town

Kitgum Town
Kitgum Town

Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Building the quality of our health services

We are currently spending time together in teaching and training and building up the quality of health services provided at Yotkom Medical Centre.
Dr Andrew Wright, Yotkom Australian Director  , and Matthew Durden , final year medical student from James Cook University, Queensland have been attending ward rounds and seeing outpatients alongside our Ugandan clinicians. There continue to be many cases of Malaria. Other infectious diseases and cases of trauma are also common.  The clinic is becoming increasingly busy.
There are good opportunities for teaching and mentoring.


We have a good emergency room for acute cases and this is often used for resuscitating patients who present with advanced disease. Many people delay coming to a doctor till they are extremely unwell because of distance and costs and sometimes firstly using traditional medicines. This makes it very challenging for our doctors and nurses to save lives especially in a resource poor setting where modern investigations and treatments are not available. Despite these difficulties we are seeing many people healed and it's very satisfying to receive their thanks and smiles for the care received , as they head back to their homes .

Yotkom is also exploring ways we can become involved in rural outreach as the level of poverty and sickness in these outlying districts is significant. We have had meetings with the Orom community, approximately 100 km from here .