Uganda (CURE/MNN) — The expansion of CURE Children's Hospital of Uganda is well underway.
They're making exciting progress toward building another patient ward, expanding their outpatients department, and adding a third operating room.
This month, they connected the old Operating Room building to the new wing, demolishing a wall and relocating the scrub sink, launching the beginning of a new era for the team.
For the past eleven years, CURE Uganda has built trust and established a reputation for providing high-quality neurosurgical care for children. They're a specialty teaching hospital that treats the neurosurgical needs of children, with an emphasis on hydrocephalus, neural tube defects, spina bifida, epilepsy and brain tumors.
These new facilities, and Dr. Peter Ssenyonga's arrival, enable them to expand services to include adults also needing neurosurgical interventions. Right now, these life-saving operations are limited to Kampala (Uganda) and Nairobi (Kenya) and are prohibitively expensive for most East Africans.
Once the construction is completed, the CURE Uganda team will offer these services for much less than anywhere else on the continent. Two of the best trained neurosurgeons working with CURE, Dr. John Mugamba and Dr. Ssenyonga, will be taking on the anticipated workload along with an experienced staff. Roughly 65% have served with CURE for more than 5 years, and a quarter have been with CURE for a decade or more.
As a result of their reputation for quality care, patients are coming from all over Uganda, as well as Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, and DR Congo. Instead of Ugandans going to Nairobi for medical care, Kenyans are coming to Mbale. Referrals have come from as far away as West Africa and Mauritius.
CURE's goal is to have Ugandans treating Ugandans, provide the best quality medical care, and keep shillings in Uganda. That way, they're part of the solution to the healthcare question in Uganda.
Since it opened in 2000, more than 8,900 surgeries have been performed at the CURE Uganda hospital. CURE Uganda has evolved and grown into a leading hospital on the continent. Most importantly, their patients experience the life-changing message of God's love for them as they receive the surgical treatments they need.
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