In January 2009, the Village Healthcare Training program on Canaan Farm
was launched. The team led by Nadine Hart, PA was comprised of a group of
amazing nurses, and a nurse practitioner from Billings, and nursing students
from Linwood College in Oregon. There were many firsts on this mission trip.
For most of us, it was the first time to Uganda. It was the first time teaching
with Acholi translators, but it also became the first annual Village Healthcare
Worker training.
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Pictured above: Nadine Hart PA (top left), Leigh Taggart RN MPH (top right), Carol Scher Stanley RN (bottom left) and Brenda Gilmore FNP (bottom right).
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According to the Declaration at Alma Ata in 1978, everyone has the right to
health, but unfortunately, the health status of Ugandans is some of the worst
in the world. Much of this has to do with the fragmentation in infrastructure
and lacking resources due to the war. Preventable diseases like malaria,
pneumonia and diarrhea account for a large number of all deaths. Factors
such as inadequate access to quality water, and lack of sanitation services,
inadequate or limited food supplies were all issues that we observed in that
first visit to Uganda and issues we hoped to address. Children and women
bore a disproportionate burden of ill health and premature death.
So during that first visit, St. Vincent Healthcare nurses, Carol Stanley, RN,
Brenda Gilmore, FNP, and myself, Leigh Taggart, RN, along with Nadine Hart
PA, developed our curriculum for the Village Healthcare Worker training. Our
topics, focused on prevention and health education, included:
- Hygiene, Sanitation and Hand washing
- Nutrition
- Diarrhea/ORS
- Maternal/Child Health
- Malaria
- HIV/AIDS/STD’s
- Respiratory Illnesses and Skin Infections
- First Aid/Wound Care/Burns
- Vital signs
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Our first annual Village Healthcare Worker training was a huge success. We
had seven women graduate. They arrived every day with notebooks in hand,
ready to learn. Their enthusiasm was contagious. Every day we met under a
shaded tree to teach new skills, share knowledge and listened to stories.
Working with these women who had lost nearly everything after the war, who
struggled to feed their children, but who still laughed and supported each
other left me humbled and filled with joy. Upon completion of the training,
they were each given a certificate and a VHT kit with thermometer, first aid
supplies, and teaching materials. Now it was their turn to go back to their
community and share their knowledge, and care for their families and
neighbors.
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Since that time, the Village Healthcare Worker trainings have continued to
grow. With the building of Emmanuel clinic, VHT’s have a referral center.
Now when a VHT graduates, not only do they obtain the VHT backpack with
supplies and a handbook, he or she also receives a bicycle to increase their
capacity to provide their services. They are an integral part of the healthcare
system in this rural part of Uganda. Several of the graduates have returned
to their native home in the northern part of the country. Here they are
continuing their work, providing essential care in the very remote bush of
Northern Uganda.
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Who would have thought the launch of this program was possible back in
2009 in that visit of firsts. It would not have been possible without the
amazing compassion of the team that year, Brenda, Carol, Nadine, and so
many others. And it definitely would not have been possible without the
team in Uganda, their trust, dedication and love for their people.
- Leigh Taggart, RN MPH
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Emmanuel Clinic in Rakayata Village Uganda
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Emmanuel clinic was a dream of Carol's for the rural remote people of Uganda she met and loved after seeing first hand the illnesses that plagued them and their children, as well as hearing the trauma the brutal LRA war inflicted. She started a buy a brick campaign with an initial garage sale. This spurned us all on and turned into years of fundraising to complete and implement the Emmanuel Cinic limited resource community health center. The clinic was named by a generous benefactor, Bob Hector, a vietnam and Iraq war veteran, and his wife Linda. Emmanuel - God with us. Sustainable Health Abroad, our Oregon nursing friends, were instrumental in helping fund the worker salaries. Multiple grants and world water day events culminated in drilling a solar water well that produced so much water it was able to be piped to the clinic, as well as all over the farm, and stored in tanks. Health care and clean water go hand in hand. These two resoures were a blessing indeed. Bob died last year. May he rest in peace knowing his legacy carries on in Uganda, as this clinic and water source currently serves a 600 student primary school, the community, large agricultural projects and multiple buildings. As with all of our work, we try to design a model of sustainability for the future and generations to come. Emmanuel clinic was turned over successfully to the Family Empowerment - Canaan Farm a few years ago and operates well to this day. Hope 2 One Life continues to support the community group, Emmanuel clinic VHT's who are a group of 25 volunteers and serve 9 villages in the region. Prior to the pandemic, our partner ACFD and our mission teams, held quarterly meetings and trainings at Emmanuel clinic. It also serves as the immunization center for the region. We have supported the Emmanual clinic VHT's (25 serving 9 villages) partnership with the government village health program, as well as an income generating project to further their sustainability. All of our pilot projects for the PRESM model were trialed here as well as community surveys and meetings to determine directly from them, what it would take to help the beautiful people of Northern Uganda devasted by the LRA war, rise out of poverty. Our links to carrying the PRESM model further north to Palabek and now Kweyo village near Kitgum were also rooted here. Imagine, from the women first praying with me in 2006 for pots to boil muddy pond water, blankets for their ill children and bibles...to the Hope for a sustainable rise out of poverty. Alice, the women group leader is still going strong and a co owner of the tailoring shop. Elvirina Tolit as you will see has relocated with her husband pastor Alfred to their homeland in Northern Uganda when the war was over. All of the women taught us many many things and worked hard to learn how to make their own bio sand water filters, bucket drip irrigation kits, beds, latrines and more. In their words, "Thank your friends and people in America, tell them we are praying for them...and you please pray for us".
Incredibly humbling this adventure has been. We love coming to visit and see how well things are going! Music to my soul.
- Nadine
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Hello friends of Hope 2 One Life! My name is Mariel Mulford, and I have been part of H2O life’s work for the past seven years. As part of our current newsletter series, I am going to focus on one of the aspects of our Post-War Recovery, Empowerment, and Sustainability Model (PRESM) that is particularly near to my heart: Public Health and Health Education.
When I first joined the H2O Life team as an intern in the summer of 2013, one of my major assignments was to design a training manual for the Village Health Trainer (VHT) program, which is a key piece of our public health focus. VHTs are volunteers from within the communities we serve who attend H2O Life’s trainings on various health education topics, from malaria and HIV prevention to wound care and diarrhea treatment. We even discuss basic nutrition principles, such as balancing different types of food groups in your diet. I designed the manual in order for VHTs to have a simple, streamlined guide to help them teach these health principles in their communities.
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Nadine Hart meeting with several VHTs at Emmanuel Clinic (a health center built by H2O Life) in 2014.
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Top photo: Dennis teaching the VHTs about biosand water filters (one of his specialties) at the conference in Gulu.
Bottom photo: Practicing wound care with the help of a red marker and some over-dramatic acting!
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Two years after my internship, I felt called to move to Uganda and pursue community development work full-time with another organization. While living there, I served on the board of Agape Community Foundation for Development (ACFD), H2O Life’s partner organization in Uganda alongside Terence Acaye, Bosco Tolit, and Dennis Odong. During the years I lived there (2015-2017), I took many trips all over the country in order to visit the communities we serve, assess H2O Life’s projects, and help lead VHT trainings. I was privileged to witness the VHT program expand to serve many villages in the rural northern region of Acholiland, the former epicenter of the brutal LRA war. From teaching under trees in rural villages to a multi-day conference in the regional center of Gulu, I watched women and men learn valuable skills that would save many lives from preventable illness and death.
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Denis, Bosco, and myself (bottom row) with a group of newly trained VHTs from all over northern Uganda, holding new copies of the VHT manual. This photo was taken at the end of a multi-day training session in Gulu.
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In light of the global pandemic, public health work is more important than ever. On top of the new threat of COVID-19, Ugandans continue to struggle with endemic diseases such as malaria and HIV/AIDS. Please consider supporting this program in order for our incredible partners in Uganda to continue this life-saving work of disease prevention and health education.
Afoyo matek (thank you very much)!
-Mariel Mulford
February 2021
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