\u201cSt. Joseph Hospital needs at least five doctors,\u201d says Sister Susan Akullo. \u201cAt the moment, there are three of us. One has worked here at least ten years without a break, so we will soon be just two.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since 1994, the Comboni Missionaries have kept the doors open here twenty-four hours a day. Doctors and nurses are in short supply, but that\u2019s not the most striking lack here.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany important drugs are out of stock in the whole country,\u201d Sister Susan says. \u201cOur greatest need are for things that are used daily \u2013 sterile gloves for surgeries, surgical sutures, urinary catheters, disinfectants, antiseptics, echography gel . . . even gauze.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe try to use materials very well. For the operating room, we use a sewing machine to stitch small pieces of gauze together so they can be sterilized and reused. Anything that can be sterilized and reused, we do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whenever volunteers visit or missionaries return from a trip abroad, they carry whatever they can in their luggage. The hospital used to get its supplies from the international dispensary association (IDA), but the cost is now beyond what it can afford.<\/p>\n
Friends and relatives tried to fill the gap by sending supplies in the mail, \u201cbut for a few years now, the post is not working,\u201d she says. Most delivery services are blocked and the few that can get through are too costly.<\/p>\n
Originally from Uganda, Sister Susan first came here as a nurse in 2009. Even then she had to take charge of medical and surgery wards when a doctor was not available. As she prepared to take her final vows in 2013, she was asked to study medicine. \u201cI felt too old to start such a study,\u201d she says. But \u201cfor the love of God and for the good of the mission, I accepted the challenge and finished school in 2020 with a medical internship.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a new general doctor, she works with another Comboni Sister who is also a doctor. \u201cNone of us is a surgeon,\u201d she says, \u201cbut we have to do all the general surgeries, obstetric, gynecologic, and orthopedic surgeries. These are new challenges for me because I just came from Uganda, where specialists are available, but here the only specialists are in the capital city nearly four hundred miles away. My poor villagers, whom we try to refer, have never been to the capital and they don\u2019t have money to travel and then manage the high cost of treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n
St. Joseph is the best, and sometimes the only, choice for the local people. When the Sisters suggest a specialist, family members will ask to simply take their loved one home to die. They have no other options.<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite all the challenges, I am happy to be able to make my little contribution to this hospital and help the needy, sick people. I could say, like our founder St. Daniel Comboni, \u2018I wish I had a thousand lives to offer to this mission.\u2019 I have a big heart, and a huge passion with lots of love, but I am just one person.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Kathleen M. Carroll)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cSt. Joseph Hospital needs at least five doctors,\u201d says Sister Susan Akullo. \u201cAt the moment, there are three of us. One has worked here at least ten years without a break, so we will soon be just two.\u201d Since 1994, the Comboni Missionaries have kept the doors open here twenty-four hours a day. Doctors and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8520,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}