Executive Director Kevin Gibbons and Field Coordinator Costaritah Nalukwago presented a livestream on #GivingTuesday to discuss how our year has been and what we are looking forward to in the year to come. Spoiler alert: we’ve got big plans about serving in a technical advising role and reaching hundreds of thousands of patients!
It’s stories like Sarah’s and the like that inspire us to keep chasing our mission to link remote communities to sufficient healthcare. We are determined to expand our work to other remote communities just to ensure that every citizen of Uganda has easy access to the medical assistance they deserve.
“In a day, I would spend about 15,000 shillings ($4) travelling to Kalangala town in order to get medical assistance. On top of that, I’d have to start my journey early morning at 7am.”
Sarah (not real name), Farmer, 62 years old, Kalangala District
Sarah highlights the difficulty and expense that residents of remote villages face in accessing healthcare in remote villages. She further explained that even when she got to the health facility early enough, she could find a long line of people already waiting to receive medical treatment. In her health situation, she would join the line and sometimes had to wait hours to eventually be attended to.
For many other residents of remote communities in Uganda, what Sarah describes is ordinary. The Uganda Ministry of Health conducts annual surveys that assess the health system performance. These surveys have shown significant shortcomings in the access to and quality of health services. Complaints of long journeys and wait times have over time discouraged patients from seeking out professional health care. https://bulamuhealthcare.org/healthcare-in-uganda/
“People end up not being informed about the diseases that could possibly affect them. Someone could even be sick and they don’t know what they are suffering from.” Ellias Kyalikunda, a community health worker in Lwengo District explained how bad the situation could get in communities that don’t have easy access to health services.
This is the gap that we as Health Access Connect (HAC) have filled over the years, through creating structural change in healthcare delivery in Uganda. With a mission to link remote communities to healthcare, HAC has been providing medical assistance to over tens of thousands of patients in remote communities. The Uganda Ministry of Health and the members of these communities greatly appreciate it.
“I appreciate what HAC did so much, and I know that even the community members agree with me because when we requested for this access to medical care, they didn’t even argue. They agreed and brought these services to us. We are able to get medicine that can last two months and all you have to spend is 2,000 shillings (54 Cents).” Sarah expressed her gratitude to HAC for the burden they have lifted off her, “I know I can sell one cassava for 2,000 shillings (54 Cents) and easily access medical assistance. The best part about it is that I don’t have to travel the long journey and I can save the 13,000 shillings ($3) that I could have spent on transport.” All she has to do now is walk a short distance from her home to the outreach clinic and in a few minutes, she receives medical attention.
Over the last year we have been spending time learning how to set up dashboards that improve our operations and allow us to use evidence in our decision making. You can see examples on our Outreach Clinic Dashboard, COVID-19 Needs Assessment, and Family Planning Dashboard. Our task for this presentation: “How can we take one year’s worth of knowledge about dashboards and pack it into a 15-minute presentation?” In our presentation we start with an Excel spreadsheet and turn it into a dashboard to have a dynamic view of patient services.
Presented by Mahima Bhattar, Kevin Gibbons, Rebecca Hanks, and Bridget Nanyonjo.
We conducted a needs assessment to the communities and healthcare workers whom we serve and partner with. We wanted to figure out what gaps there are in understanding of COVID-19 and figure out how to guide our activities.
Some of our key takeaways are:
You can read more in our COVID-19 Needs Assessment Report (the data are interesting to explore!).
If you donate a portion of your DAF before September 30th, your contribution could be matched by the #HalfMyDAF campaign! #HalfMyDAF is a campaign to unlock the potential of Donor Advised Funds to support important causes. Here is the language from their website:
So we are issuing a challenge. From May 5 through September 30, 2020, you can nominate nonprofits to be eligible for matching grants of up to $10,000— and in eight cases up to $25,000. All you need to do is commit to granting half of your DAF by September 30th and start giving. About 300 nonprofits will receive matching grants—a total of $1.4 million in additional funding.
Our goal is to open up the system and motivate more giving today, when nonprofits can do so much to help those in need. When you take the #HalfMyDAF challenge, you’ll become a #HalfMyDAF Hero. Yes, it’s goofy. Hopefully it’s memorable.
Do you have a Donor Advised Fund (DAF)? Please consider donating from your DAF to HAC now! During this pandemic, HAC needs support to aid communities during these difficult times, including distribution of PPE and free outreach clinics.
Over the past six years, Health Access Connect has supported hundreds of frontline health workers to provide consistent, sustainable care to remote communities of Uganda. We have witnessed first-hand the bravery, passion, and care that frontline health workers bring to their positions every single day, and we are proud to play even a small role in facilitating that work. Now, in these unprecedented times, we are so grateful that the entire world is celebrating frontline health workers as much as we do. We are looking to new ways to bolster support for these incredible individuals and their communities in the uncertain months ahead.
COVID-19 has posed frightening obstacles to both our communities and our work in those communities, whether it be transport restrictions, financial uncertainty, or drug stockouts. As such, we are focusing our fundraising efforts to support frontline health workers in their efforts to reach the most remote and vulnerable communities of Uganda. Please donate to help us serve the most marginalized communities in this time.
During the unprecedented times, HAC must adapt to the increasing barriers that are making it even harder for rural communities to be served. We are providing free outreach clinics between June 15th and July 31st so communities who have lost jobs, income, and stability do not lose their access to health care.
HAC has always valued sustainability in our outreach clinics as we believe this is the only way to create everlasting change and improvement in the communities we serve.
HAC held its annual Stakeholder Workshops for government officials, health workers, and community members to review programmatic successes and challenges over the past year. Everyone had an opportunity to share their experiences and learn from one another.
HAC’s Executive Director, Kevin Gibbons, addressed the emerging COVID-19 epidemic effecting countries around the world and stressed the importance of prevention measures. He then delivered a presentation on HAC’s mission and vision, including some of our successes and challenges.
Dr. Musisi, the District Health Officer (DHO) of Masaka, expressed his gratitude for HAC’s innovative approach to bringing healthcare services to hard to reach areas. With HAC’s presence in Masaka District since 2016, Dr. Musisi’s testimonial provided reassurance and guidance to the DHOs of Ssembabule, Lyantonde and Lwengo districts as they now join HAC’s catchment area and establish new outreach clinics.
Stakeholder workshops provide an opportunity for community members, community health workers (known as “VHTs” in Uganda), health workers, and district leaders to come together on an annual bases to reflect on what is being done well at HAC outreach clinics and what could be improved on. By holding stakeholder workshops with multiple districts together, best practices can be shared and common issues can be addressed.
HAC gains valuable insight into challenges communities face, as well as creative community-based solutions that they can provide themselves. HAC encourages the communities, health facilities and district leadership to take ownership of their health outreach clinics to best serve their communities.
Five years!! We completed the registration for Health Access Connect on November 28, 2014. I am thankful for the most rewarding five years of my life.
Today on Thanksgiving I am grateful for the privilege to be able to do the work that I do. To be able to spend every hour of my work life toward connecting poor people in remote villages to healthcare, and to do it in a sustainable way.
I first got interested in healthcare in remote villages during research that I conducted in Lake Victoria fishing villages. I was asking about fisheries management, livelihoods, migrations … lots of academic things. Yet almost all of the people whom I was interviewing were talking about access to basic social services: The health facilities are too far away, and people’s health suffers because of it. As an outsider to public health work at the time, the big puzzle to me was “Why are there people who are dying of HIV when free lifesaving healthcare is just 3 miles away?!”
Carolyne Ariokot and I started HAC because we are haunted by the inequality in the world. Why shouldn’t everyone have access to what they need to care for themselves and their loved ones? Health Access Connect is our response to that challenge. We can’t fix everything, but we can try to get healthcare closer to people.
I look at my wife Nancy and my daughter Amiya. We have benefited from access to healthcare in so many ways:
Access to healthcare is personal to me and to everyone else.
As I write this now, HAC has helped Ugandan health workers to serve over 20,000 patients in remote areas. We are currently helping serve over 42 villages and 1,350 patients per month with lifesaving healthcare. Note that these are areas that other organizations have been able to reach with consistent care, and our team at HAC has been able to set up a sustainable system to reach them every 1-2 months. I say with great humility that HAC’s work is changing healthcare in Uganda and has the potential to make the world a more equitable place.
Once you take out the places that are within 5km (3.1 miles) to the nearest health facility, there are large swaths of the country that are underserved. That’s where HAC needs to be!
To get closer to that goal, we want to reach over 100 villages with monthly or bimonthly healthcare by the end of 2020.
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, to everyone who has been with us on the ride for these five years:
I am thankful for you all.
Gratefully,
Kevin