ENTEBBE: A new highly specialized hospital for pediatric care has opened at the former Special Forces Command (SFC) farm in Entebbe and offers free treatment.
“This land was for the SFC cattle farm. When I heard of the hospital, I said this was a more lifesaving effort than the cows. We gave them 30 acres. I am happy that there is another idea of adding a nurses’ training centre,” President Yoweri Museveni tweeted earlier on today as the Minister of Health opened the facility.
The ‘Emergency Children’s Hospital in Entebbe’ will offer free treatment for life-saving surgeries in particular.
The hospital, which is the work of Italian doctors under a charity called Emergency, funded it to the tune of $19 million with the Uganda government footing 20% of the bill. The facility was founded as an African centre of excellence and top surgeons from around the world will work alongside Ugandan doctors to provide children from across the continent life-changing surgery free of charge.
‘We don’t ask how rich you are’
“The door is open for everybody. We don’t ask how rich or poor you are,” says Emergency Uganda’s Country Director, Giacomo Menaldo.
“Our approach is, ‘Let’s do what people deserve’. That is, the latest knowledge of medicine, the latest techniques, the latest equipment. Internally, we always say, would we bring our relatives and friends into our hospital? If the answer is yes, we are doing a good job.”
The facility is the second phase of the Emergency’s African Network of Medical Excellence programme. The NGO, founded by Dr Strada in Italy in 1994, has partnered with the health ministries of thirteen African countries with a plan to build an integrated network of specialized facilities across the continent, training local doctors and transporting and treating patients from across the region free of charge.
This hospital cost close to £19 million to build, with the Ugandan government contributing 20 per cent of that total – plus the site it sits on. The rest of the tab, plus most of the running costs (estimated to be just shy of £5 million annually), were picked up by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and a number of other, mainly Italian, families and foundations.
Doctors here say the facility will transform Uganda’s pediatric healthcare system. While 46 per cent of the country’s population of 46 million are under the age of 14, the 72-bed hospital alone will triple the number of pediatric surgical beds available nationwide. At full capacity, the hospital aims to perform ten to fourteen surgeries per day.
During the official opening of the hospital on Friday, Health Ministry Dr. Ruth Acieng thanked the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development for partially funding the project.
“Our sincere appreciation to the ministry for funding, donor agencies for contribution in terms of pro bono architectural services design and financiers, engineers and teams who constructed this facility. Thank you. This is a landmark in our step to delivering quality services,” she said.
She added that during a tour of the facility, she met a baby patient who is in the recovery process.
“She is progressing well under the care of our health workers,” she tweeted later on.
For more on this story, please visit: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/inside-scandalously-beautiful-childrens-hospital-designed-shards/