I had the privilege of spending 7 weeks on placement in hospitals in Uganda and Tanzania over the summer. I spent 5 weeks in Kiwoko hospital, a Christian hospital in the rural Luweero region in Uganda, around 2 hours north of Kampala. The hospital has around 230 beds and departments such as maternity, paediatrics, neonatal HDU, male and female wards, outpatients, psychiatry, surgery and many outpatient clinics. It was so exciting to experience a hospital where spiritual and medical care were integrated. For example, each day began with a chapel service, the surgical teams would pray before surgery, the doctors meeting each morning ended with a prayer. But also in unspoken ways, the love and grace of Jesus was proclaimed, through the care of doctors, nurses, housekeepers and cleaners that radiated love and compassion of Christ. They modelled such dependence on God in their honest, raw prayers and committing each day to the Lord at the chapel service.

I learnt much from my time on the paediatrics ward. The conditions children were coming in with were vastly different to in UK paediatric wards, with common conditions being malaria, malnutrition, sickle cell crisis, alongside gastroenteritis, bronchiolitis and pneumonia. It was common to see more severe, late presentations because families struggled to afford hospital fees, and so would generally approach community clinics and herbalists before coming to hospital.

I also enjoyed attending a number of different clinics: HIV, mental health, sickle cell clinic and community eye outreach. The community eye clinic was a fortnightly clinic where the eye team would visit a rural village and offer free eye checks, glasses and treatment. We drove in a minibus along some very bumpy unpaved roads for a couple of hours to reach the village. Most of the people there had never had their eyes tested and none of them had glasses. We set up the equipment in the village hall (an open sided shelter with grass roof and extended with a tarpaulin). The day started with introductions, explaining Kiwoko hospital’s mission, and sharing the Gospel. It was amazing! Two people gave their lives to Jesus then and there! Through the community eye outreach 42 people have become Christians this year (as of July!). Then the team set to work, doing consultations, eye tests, and prescriptions. At the end of a very long day, the village leaders had cooked us some traditional Ugandan food to enjoy for dinner. We all sat eating, singing and praying!

Everyone at Kiwoko was so welcoming and generous, I made some good friends there and it felt difficult to leave. The doctors and nurses helped us students to settle in quickly and feel at home - teaching us how to make chapattis, helping us navigate local transport, invites for coffee on Sunday afternoons, walks around a pineapple farm and the market. The children of the staff who lived on the hospital compound would often come to play, and I have so many happy memories of playing tag, climbing trees, colouring and playing creative (!) versions of Uno! I feel very grateful to the Lord for the people at Kiwoko and experiencing Christian family wherever we are in the world.

I spent the final 2 weeks of my medical elective in the emergency department of Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre in Moshi, a large town in the North of Tanzania, very near Mount Kilimanjaro. It was a busy department seeing patients with very severe conditions and again very different to the UK. The lack of resources was evident even in this larger hospital and yet the team were adaptable and creative with solutions. One example of this was when an 18-year-old man walked in with an amputation just below his elbow. He had been using some industrial machinery. There were no torniquets (despite the frequency of these kind of injuries) and so we used catheters to tie tightly around his arm to reduce the bleeding. It was a challenge to see injuries like this, which were preventable. Sadly, there were times of awful loss and grief and this was a real challenge to face.

I am very grateful for the support to have been able to go on this elective and thankful to the Lord for the experiences I had and for His dependability and faithfulness.