Uganda Healthcare

This week we will be meeting in the Cypress 1 & 2 Rooms at the Sheraton. They are on the lower level at the bottom of the stairs by the pool. If in doubt, look for the directional signs pointing the way.

  Please join us Friday when our speaker will be Gerald Atwine talking about Bulamu Healthcare in Uganda where he is Co-founder, President and Director. Bulamu, in the local Luganda language, means the health and well-being of the entire person. They operate with the underlying belief that access to professional healthcare is a basic human right. Looking for local solutions, they are building in-country organizational strength in Africa that can ultimately operate independently of foreign help. They want to find the lowest-cost model for providing needed services and deliver them with continuously improving operational excellence. They trust that this will create an organizational culture that puts the patient first, is consistently caring, turns no one in need away, and attracts dedicated employees and volunteers. All this while being information driven, evolving toward sustainability, while providing faith-based counseling as a component in the process of acceptance, treatment, and recovery from disease. About 1/3 of their patients are children under 15 brought by their mothers. Since their first weeklong medical camp in April 2016, Bulamu has tapped into a huge unmet need for primary medical care in rural Uganda. Their medical camps are held at small, government-operated health centers designed to serve the local population’s needs. They utilize the existing building for their operating room, dental clinic, maternity ward, testing lab, pharmacy, and supply room and then add rented tents, tables and chairs in the surrounding open space. That clinic has been there all along, yet when they announce a new medical camp, 8,000 people came from miles around because they were confident they will see a doctor and receive the treatment and medicines they need.

  Gerald Atwine was born and raised in Uganda, the youngest of ten children in a middle-class family in the industrial town of Jinja. His father, a high school teacher turned businessman, was shot and killed during the brutal regime of the infamous Idi Amin when Gerald was only 8 months old. His mother, widowed and illiterate, managed to raise her ten children single handedly amidst unspeakable social, economic and political hardships. Through a lot of struggle and help from relatives, Gerald graduated with honors from Makerere University, Uganda. While his degree was in mass communications, he had known since he was a child that he wanted a career as a medical professional. Gerald managed to secure a U.S. student visa, gain acceptance to the University of Michigan, earn his bachelor’s degree in nursing, and become a licensed R.N. in California. He later moved to the San Francisco area, where he still works as a contract registered nurse in the Kaiser healthcare system. His flexible work schedule allowed him to travel to Uganda on volunteer medical missions and ultimately launch Bulamu. Gerald became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2013, but he has never lost his childhood desire to use his education to benefit his native Uganda.

   He found himself in a Santa Clara hospital treating Jim Balassone, a retired technology firm executive who was recovering from surgery. The two bonded, and a few months later Jim traveled to Uganda with Gerald to explore the potential for starting an NGO to improve the health of poor Ugandans. They soon had formed Bulamu Healthcare International, with Jim as chief fundraiser and Gerald in charge of program activities, personally overseeing on-site each medical camp while continuing his nursing work in the U.S. between camps. Tragically, Jim Balassone passed away in 2017 after three weeks of hospitalization due to a rare lung disease. Because of that chance encounter in a Santa Clara hospital room between co-founders Jim, Gerald, and Bulamu will treat over 60,000 patients in 2018 who would not have otherwise seen a doctor, all for a cost of about $4 per patient. And this is just the beginning.