IMET2000-Africa and Asia
Uganda
People living within rural areas of Africa very often face a severe lack of immediate or specialised medical support. Where life is already very difficult economically and people try to survive on less than $1 a day – a lack of adequate medical resources exacerbate illnesses such as malaria, HIV/AIDS, child, maternal and pregnancy complications.
In Uganda the District of Mukona typifies this problem. It covers an area of 1875 square kilometres with a population of over 600,000 growing at 2.7% per annum. The governmental hospitals and clinics are poorly equipped and lacking the most basic medicines. People with serious cases may need to travel 50-100 kilometres over poor roads to get to reasonable hospitals in Kampala or Naggalama.
Whilst recent road improvements have opened up the district and hastened transport, the negative impact has been an increase in serious road accidents and physical trauma needing rapid critical care and life-saving surgery not locally available.
Since 2013, IMET2000 has been dedicated to working alongside Kisoga born Mr Mukalazi Henry Garvin, Head of the Radiology Department in St Francis Naggalama Hospital. IMET2000 has invested heavily in the new Herona Hospital to provide affordable health services to the wider village communities.
Since then an average of 5000 patients have come through the doors of Herona Hospital every month, to benefit from free malaria medication, anti-retroviral therapy and a prevention project to eliminate HIV transmission from mother-to -child.
IMET2000 has, amongst other initiatives:
- Opened a modern Eye Clinic to provide a visual impairment service with a dedicated surgical suite and modern equipment offering service 4 days per week and an ophthalmic surgeon one day.
- Created a borehole to 82ft and storage tank to provide running good quality water in all taps and rooms in the hospital.
- Stocked the pharmacy such that the profit on sales over last two months has allowed taking on more nursing staff and increasing salaries of all and re-stocking to full capacity.
- Installed Internet connections, an on-line library facility and full software audit system for control of all financial and treatment activities.
- Built a tarmacked car park at front of the hospital.
- Purchased & shipped essential hospital equipment and consumables.
In October 2018 the King of Buganda visited the hospital to lay the foundation stone of the Eye Clinic.
On May the 1st 2020, the building of Herona Hospital was completed and officially opened by the district health officer. For more information please visit www.herona.org
Ghana
IMET2000 has for over seven years been supporting an affiliated charity called Action Through Enterprise (ATE) based in Lawra in Upper West Ghana and working in a desperately poor region to relieve poverty and provide basic nutrition and education to children.
In particular, we finance a project (Special Needs Awareness Programme or SNAP). Workshops are held at regular intervals in which children with severe mental and physical disabilities meet together with their mothers for training in a range of skills suitable for their children.
For example, workshops have been really successful in Ebola awareness, reducing risks of malaria, learning sewing skills, childhood nutrition, making toys from recycled materials and many others. IMET2000 also funded a number of wheelchairs donated in the UK. We continue to finance this SNAP programme. (www.ateghana.org).
Malawi
IMET2000 is supporting a promising doctor called Dr Jimmy Banda from Malawi to study in Sharda University in India for an MSc in Clinical Research Methodology. Jimmy has just completed the first of 2 years and passed his exams with flying colours. He starts his second academic year in August and this is very clinically and patient based. Once completed, Jimmy returns to his family in Malawi and will resume his career in research and teaching in Blantyre University Medical School.
India
IMET2000 has for five years provided limited support for a programme in West Bengal run by a close friend and colleague Olivia Donnelly as CEO of Shivia (www.shivia.com). This is enabling extremely poor and abused women to achieve a measure of financial independence and mental and physical health.
IMET2000 is now forming a new partnership with the Tibet Relief Fund (http://www.tibetrelieffund.co.uk) to provide child mental health training to nurses, psychologists, social workers and school teachers working in a children’s community badged as Tibetan Ability in Dharamsala in North India. Our IMET2000 Trustee, Dr Hasanen Al Taiar, responsible for our mental health programmes worldwide enjoyed an extremely productive meeting with the CEO of TRF , Philippa Carrick and Colin Green on the 8th May. We agreed plans starting with a visit of Hasanen to Dharamsala in July to assess needs and produce a feasibility study.
Laos
Our IMET2000 Trustee, Dr Rebecca Inglis has spent 3 years in Laos working on raising standards for care critically ill patients. She has recently joined the local World Health Organisation (WHO) branchto help in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.