Starting from a dream in 2008, the Caring Hands Foundation team has now established itself as a predominant positive influence in the lives of many Ugandans. Our medical team including Dr. Robert Kayesubala, Dr. John Mundaka, Dr. Charles Holt, nurse Celina Oziru along with social worker Grace Muhindo Kabugho and Ruth Sesanga round on patients admitted to Mulago Hospital and attend to their physical, social, and spiritual needs. CHF provides much needed support, drugs, medical supplies, and sophisticated radiological scans for these patients. Many times our patients are referred to us by the Mulago Social Work Department which acts as our organizational partner within the administrative structure of the hospital. Our patients can be located throughout many specialty wards within Mulago Hospital including the Intensive Care Unit where we see many head injury cases. We specialize in caring for poor patients entering the hospital who have no family or who are in a dysfunctional relationship with their families. In Africa, it is common practice that family members or caregivers accompany the patient to provide food, bedding, and general nursing care during the patients hospital stay as the hospital usually has no funds to provide these ancillary services that are common in the West. Mulago Hospital is Uganda’s only tertiary care hospital in the country, and unfortunately, it is drastically underfunded making resources within the hospital extremely limited.

Caring Hands has developed a strong reputation within the hospital for delivering excellent medical care, and it is not unusual for medical specialists to call on us to partner with them in the treatment of their individualized patients. We enjoy hearing attending physicians around the hospital exclaim, “Thank God, Caring Hands is here” when they see us coming to help out their patients. Earning a reputation like we have is no easy accomplishment in an institution like Mulago and we are committed to pursuing our ministry.

Along with caring for the patient’s physical needs, CHF also provides spiritual and social counseling as many of our patients are “lost” in many aspects of life. We pray for them, read Scripture, discuss heaven and eternity with them, contact their family members when we can find them, and work towards reconciliation within the family. It is not unusual for us to even travel to our patient’s home villages to find family members or friends who can assist with our patients’ rehabilitation and follow up doctor visits. There is no other organization within Mulago Hospital which makes this kind of effort on behalf of patients.

CHF has helped fund two medical clinics in Buvuma Island chain located in Lake Victoria. Lake Victoria is the source of the Nile River as it flows through Uganda on its northward path to Egypt, and the lake forms the southern border of Uganda. We work closely with another Christian organization called Shepard’s Heart International Ministries (SHIM) who are supported by Outreach International headquartered in Tupelo Mississippi. Andy and Karina Smith, who created SHIM, and who live on Lingira Island with their two children, have spent many years ministering to the islanders within the Buvuma island chain, and we recently helped them remodel their now restored medical clinic on Namiti Island in 2012.

CHF organized and funded a large mobile medical camp in June of 2012 in a town called Kasensero located in southwest Uganda on the shores of Lake Victoria near the Tanzanian border. Caring Hands Foundation has been ministering to this community over many years, and this was the first time we had ever attempted a large scale mobile medical effort. We joined forces with the Rakai District health care workers to provide acute diagnostic care and treatment for over 1200 patients during the two day event. Kasensero is known as the community in the world where HIV/AIDS was first isolated and identified in the early 1980s. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines an epidemic as any country with a specific disease that infects 1% of the population. The local government health nurse assigned to Kasensero testifies that 75% of everyone she tests in Kasensero is positive for the HIV virus. There is a lot to accomplish in Kasensero.

We recently completed our second medical mission to Kasensero where we treated close to 2000 individuals during the two day event. It was inspirational not only for the community of Kasensero, but to all those of us who were involved in carrying out the work. In this year’s camp, medical specialty teams included dentistry who treated over 300 patients, opthamology that screened many and handed out scores of reading glasses, and a hearing evaluation team that identified a significant number of individuals who will need hearing aids. Momentum continues to build for this annual event, and CHF developed many new friends during this camp that will lead to even better care for the people of Kasensero in the future.