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Background
Kagando Mission Hospital and Rural Development Center (KARUDEC) is located in the Kasese District in a moutainous region near the Congo Border in Uganda, seventy five
miles north  of Rwanda. In recent years, rebel insurgency in the area caused the displacement of
thousands of households to protected enclaves on and near the hospital grounds. This resulted in the disruption of the social and economic dynamics of the communities involved and resulted in even lower incomes
for many of the afflicted families. As a consequence, the incidence of malnutrition, cholera, AIDS, and tuberculosis has risen dramatically..
The district is criss-crossed by rutted dirt roads, is without electricity, and has severely limited access to clean water. Private motor vehicles are nearly
nonexistent. For the most part, people walk and carry. A few have bicycles which they overload with extraordinary amounts of goods of every
description. Most families live in one or two room, thatched, wattle and mud huts. A few have a small concrete house with a metal roof. Only a handful have their own source of clean water.
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QUICK FACTS : KASESE DISTRICT
- Average landholding 1.5 acres
- Major livelihood is subsistence farming
- Average annual income = $300
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How KARUDEC Differs From Other Hospitals
The mission hospitals in East Africa have many problems in common. However, Kagando, through it’s community
programs, addresses problem solving in significantly different ways. First, members of the community are intimately involved in all aspects of program
development. These include the identification of needs, development of means to address them, formulation of specific objectives to be achieved,
establishment of budget and personnel requirements, methods of funding, and devising criteria to evaluate the projects’ successes and failures.
Being designed with input from citizens and local councils, the projects have a high rate of acceptance and participation.
Second, programs are structured in a holistic manner. For example, malnutrition in children is so common that a section of the pediatric ward is
solely devoted to its treatment. (Malnutrition, dysentery, and malaria are the most common causes of death in children under 5 years of age.) Treating
the acute and chronic manifestations of malnutrition is not enough. The primary objective at Kagando is to prevent the same children being
admitted again and again. To achieve this objective, a nutrition education program has been instituted for mothers and caregivers. Caregivers often
outnumber mothers, because many children have been orphaned by AIDS. The program includes hands-on cooking sessions where the women learn
how to prepare foods so as to preserve their nutrients. In addition, they learn which crops provide maximum nutrients as well as high yields when
grown at home. Demonstration gardens on the hospital grounds facilitate the process. And, when the women and children return home, learning
continues through community outreach and follow-up evaluations.
Third, it is significant that men and women in the community participate in hospital and outreach programs as volunteers. This is not only unusual, but
very encouraging because Africans, for the most part, are not attuned to the concept of volunteerism. The majority of community health workers are
volunteers. Their involvement fosters neighbor-to-neighbor cohesiveness, promotes grassroots communication and learning and results in appreciable cost savings. It should be emphasized that recipients of
KARUDEC services are expected to pay money or in-kind as much of the cost of their care as possible. Often, this amounts to nothing or only a few
hundred shillings. However, the payments add up and defray significant expenses. Without them, the organization could not survive.
Community input, holistic approach, and volunteer participation have been nurtured by the intuitive and farsighted management team at KARUDEC.
Most have acquired their skills on the job and have intimate association with the people they serve. The managers, doctors, nurses, teachers,
program directors, staff and students are sustained by their religious faith and commitment. They face what to us in the developed world seem
insurmountable problems with meager resources. They combine the innate friendliness of the Ugandan people with persistence and compassion.
They rarely speak about problems. Rather, they are constantly seeking the best possible remedies for the endless challenges before them.
Find Out More About KARUDEC Programs
Read more about KARUDEC’s programs needing your help by clicking on any of the topics listed on the navigation bar on the left of this page or just
below. Topics include: AIDS; Maternal/Child Health; Malaria; Water; Milk, Meat, Fish and Beans; and the Nursery School project. Find out how you can help by visiting our Giving section.
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