Medical overview of Lukuli and the Hope Clinic patients
The parish of Lukuli is characterised as a suburb of the city which had initially been developed and resulted in large parcels (“plots”) of land being allocated and sold, in many cases with little building taking place. For this reason the infrastructure of the parish and the adjoining Makindye Hill was less developed with few sealed roads and few roads of car-width apart from the main Lukuli Road. In the past ten years the development that has taken place has been rapid and whilst road and water connections have kept pace, the provision of medical care, community health outreach and education has been lacking.

The population has increased by 50% over that period (and since the last Census). At the 2003 count the Makindye Division population was found to be 299,000, including 50,000 within 2km of the clinic (12,000 within our Lukuli parish). However, as one indicator of the poverty of this wider community, the Divisional literacy level is only 20% against a national average of 54%. This affects the degree of acceptance of health information and also limits the methods that can be effective in getting the messages across: use of radio broadcasts and community, council or church meetings is common.

Hope Clinic Lukuli’s performance
The Clinic is developing its range of services and staff complement with a corresponding growth in patient numbers and caseloads. The detailed statistics for the last few months are summaries of the national health reporting #105. Total patients are the sum of OPD (over and under 5 yrs), HIV tests, Ante-natal checks and births. The immunisations are the number of vaccinations and can be multiple per child, approximating 150 to 200 children a month:

The growth in patients has been a great encouragement from the community reflecting the commitment of our staff and their approach to the patients. The page linked above called Last Few Months shows the full trend over the clinic's history. The peak of counselling, testing and immunisation has been late 2008 when we were funded to undertake outreach to fishing communities, near colleges and on an island in Lake Victoria.

We have been visited by the head of clinical services from the Mildmay Centre and the Infectious Disease Institute (IDI) to evaluate our potential to care for their HIV positive clients - and we have good initial feedback. From early 2006 we have been distributing the Basic Care Package from CDC to support positive patients (it excludes ARVs but has clean water systems and treated mosquito nets). From July 2006, the paediatric HIV team from JCRC have been visiting for a free consultation once a week. During this visit they take samples for CD-4 counts and provide Septrin to all those receivin the CD-4 results. The Basic Care Package, the Septrin and ARVs from JCRC and the HIV test kits we use are all funded by PEPFAR. Another grant from the US Embassy is ensuring our counselling and testing remains free to the clients during 2009.

Our youth group meets every Saturday afternoon to discuss a variety of teen issues as well as providing necessary information to enable choices on relationships and how to understand change in themselves, families and their peers. The Stay Alive programme of lifeskills and HIV awareness had been funded by Until There's a Cure and was implemented through schools and youth groups near the clinic in late 2006 and the first term of 2007. It reached over 2000 children as well as their parents and the teachers at the schools. The schools and households are encouraged to collect a free mosquito net from the clinic, the nets having been provided by Rotary International clubs in Makindye, Uganda and Cheltenham Cleeve Vale in the UK. The Saturday activities now include Right to Play games in the morning and classes in art and crafts in the afternoon.

These services do require financial support to cover the salaries of staff providing the technical materials, administering the counselling and monitoring the impact of the care packages. Please go to our 'How you can Support' page above.

Detailed HMIS data is available online at Extract of HMIS 105