The International Medical Education Trust 2000 (IMET2000) has decades of experience in upgrading healthcare provision worldwide but particularly in Africa, the Middle East, India and Ukraine. Examples of programmes in Africa are child and maternal health work in Senegal (2008-2011), sponsorship of medical students from poor rural homes in Malawi (2007-onward), sponsorship of medical and physiotherapy students in Gulu University School of Medicine, Uganda (2012-onward), on-line support for midwifery/nursing students in Fort Portal, Uganda (2017-onward), support for a modern burns unit in South Africa (2007) and financial support for disabled children in Upper Ghana (2014-onward).
More recently, our IMET2000 Director of Field Operations in Uganda, Richard Field, who has been very active in supporting children in need over the past six years has identified massive deficits in provision of healthcare in rural areas of Uganda particularly in dealing with HIV/AIDS, malaria, child and maternal health and the high incidence of sight defects. He has drawn on the experience and skills of two outstanding Ugandans, John Njendahayo and Mukalazi Henry Garvin, who have established very much at their own expense health clinics which attempt to address these deficits as not-for- profit private enterprises (NGOs) providing very basic clinical services to a population existing on less than one US dollar a day.
Henry Garvin set up in the small town Kisoga (population 20,000) the Herona Medical and Imaging Centre (HMIC) to service patients in the Ntenjeru Sub County of the Mukono District but this has now been demolished to make way for an expanded main road. The needs of the local population have grown exponentially to such an extent that he has started since 2013 to design, have planning permission approved, lay foundations and part build a 40-bed Rural Hospital badged as the Herona Hospital (what in the UK would be a cottage hospital).This is well under way with 20 of the beds completed and filled with patients after opening the doors on the 15th September,2017. IMET2000 has at our Uganda representative Richard Field’s strong recommendation funded Phase One of this build and did so with a total grant of only £34,000. We are now committed to: equip to international standards the existing wards, clinics (haematology/phlebotomy, dental and eye clinics) and operating theatres (budget £85,000); complete the build of the rest of the hospital (a further £92,000); purchase one ambulance (£15,000) and subsidise the staff salaries for the first year (2018-2019) until the not-for- profit hospital breaks even financially through charging patients low fees and small charges for medicines.