Living in the United States, I feel that I take everything that we have for granted, including the health care that we have access to. While being in Uganda, we have been blessed with many opportunities such as a tour of Nakaseke Hospital. We were provided a tour and presentation by Mr. Ntumwa Matovu. The similarities between the system in Uganda and the system in the Unites States were surprising while some of the differences were expected.
Never having been exposed to hospital care in a developing country before, I had not known what to expect of it. Being ignorant to the topic, I was surprised to find that the hospital system was not all that different from what I am used to; such as the different departments we were able to see in the hospital. For example, the hospital had specific departments for Neonatal as well as Pediatrics. From observations and our tour, I learned that the HIV department is big if not bigger than other departments in the hospital seeming very developed, as well as the HIV services and medication provided being free of charge. Along the lines of medication, the drug management in the hospital was also similar to our drug management. As expected in our healthcare, doctors, nurses, pharmacists and more are expected to maintain their education on medicine, as is expected of them here as well. Unexpectedly, the hospital has four pharmacy outlets, along with all pharmacists being responsible for monitoring orders and more.
Apart from similarities, the differences were more expected ones. For example, our health care system does a fairly good job at keeping our medical equipment, facilities, and procedures up to date. Nakaseke has medical equipment that has been used to almost 40 years, being very outdated. Some of the common challenges that Nakaseke faces, that we typically do not have to face at our health care facilities include poor infrastructure, limited finances to address necessary needs, as well as lack of community participation. Even though in the US we do in fact face some of these challenges to a degree, they are not quite as present as they seem to be here.
In Uganda, there are a total of 40 hospitals in the country compared to there being 5,534 registered hospitals in the United States. With that being said the population in Uganda is 41.49 million people and 325.7 million people in the United States. These statistics show that per every 1,037,250 people in Uganda, there is one hospital. Per every 58,854 people in the United States, there is one hospital. These numbers show that in a developing country, there is a lack of accessible health services compared to what we are lucky to have in the United States.
Chelsea's Odyssey 