Get Out of the Box
Medical Mission Trip to Uganda
By: Steve Nester, Walgreens Staff Pharmacist
Our team of 23 traveling from USA was excited about going to Uganda for a medical mission trip this past May, 2018.  This was our sixth collaborative trip to Uganda with Palm Beach Atlantic University (“PBAUâ€), Gregory School of Pharmacy (“GSOPâ€) and Word In Deed Ministries (“WIDâ€). Our group included newbie’s P1, P2, P3, and more seasoned P4 pharmacy students. We had three GSOP “repeat†alumni-graduates a/k/a missionaries, two professors, plus a PBAU nursing student.  My wife Lisa, as the partnering representative of WID, also had their own team of missionaries who support the ongoing health and education initiatives they are doing year round in Uganda. My official role was as a PBAU-GSOP Preceptor.
Part of our trip preparation included meeting at GSOP twice a month starting in January where the students researched and presented on the disease conditions we expected to encounter, i.e., HIV, Malaria, PDI’s, STI’s, typhoid, parasites, GURD, along with the potential treatment options.  We thought we were abundantly prepared to offer medical treatment, as well as spiritual encouragement to the people in the villages around Lake Victoria. We were blessed with even more resources this year by including a dental team from Hope Smiles, a non-profit based out of Tennessee that has a clinic in Jinja, Uganda.  Additionally, WID had arranged for a family planning team from Uganda Women’s Health, an agency doing family planning education, cervical cancer screenings, and offering birth control implants. We hire Ugandan doctors and nurses to assist us with the clinics and have many translators participating to assist us with the language barrier as most people in the small villages speak Lugandan.   We had a lot of moving parts for this medical mission trip.
The four villages we served were very excited about getting free medical care from “the Mzungu’s!â€(a/k/a white people). We saw approximately 800-patients during the 5-clinic days, which was more than we anticipated. My hope was to utilize my photography gifts more this year and devote more time in relationship building with the people I knew.  But there were many needs, many patients to see, and now we had more agencies involved with this trip so photography was last on my ‘to do’ list. Our first 3 days could be described as “challenging, exhausting and overwhelming†during our 12-18 hour days.
We acquired most of our drugs from a US-based international resource, Kingsway Charities, Org., mainly due to inconsistencies in obtaining quality Ugandan pharmaceutical sources. The first challenge we experienced upon arrival was Ugandan Customs and the National Drug Authority confiscated our drugs at the airport. We thought we had all the proper paperwork, but we have learned to expect the unexpected while in Uganda. Long story short, we had no drugs for first clinic day and as of today, we are still awaiting the release of our drugs by the NDA. We had to scramble with local pharmacies to obtain what we needed on a daily basis, which obviously added additional trials given we were scheduled for these clinics and obtaining large quantities of drugs in small towns is extremely difficult. We are hoping the “still in date drugs†will eventually be released and can be available for next year. Luckily some vitamins and first aid supplies that Walgreens donated made it through in personal suitcases.
Some of the ailments we treat are skin disorders, parasites, malaria, PID, PUD, malnourishment, and hernias. We screen for HIV, Malaria, H Pylori, Diabetes, and more. Â This year was special because we used electronic medical records instead of paper. It was a little rough at the start as we were getting used to it, but the LAN that we set up worked pretty well for places with no electricity.
Despite the challenges, it is always such a joy to serve the Ugandan villagers because of the joy and appreciation they exhibit in spite of their poverty. Â Through Word In Deed Ministries, we are able to sponsor students at these village schools, which actually started because the pharmacy students on mission wanted to support the orphaned children in school. The schools where we do our mobile clinics are affiliated with local Presbyterian churches and we have enjoyed watching these children grow up over the past 7-years. We are honored to serve with the same Ugandan doctors, nurses, pastors and translators year-after-year, developing longstanding relationships.
We were also able to fund 14 surgeries and bring a couple of kids to city hospitals for care by providing the financial resources for treatment and transportation. There is way too much to relate in a brief account like this, but one of the most important opportunities is to love on the children and families and to give them hope.  I highly recommend you get “out of your box†and see where you can serve others. They will be better off for it and so will you.
This entry was posted on Monday, July 23rd, 2018 at 3:17 pm and is filed under Uganda. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.