Julia Report May 2025

Julia Report May 2025

The two weeks that I spent in Lira absolutely flew by, and there is so much to reflect on. When we first arrived, I was blown away by how friendly and welcoming everyone in Lira was and how excited they were to meet the Poole Africa Link team.

The first few days were spent finding our feet and planning when and what to teach. I thoroughly enjoyed getting stuck in on the Paediatric Ward, Neonatal Unit and Emergency Department, doing some bedside teaching and identifying what learning we could deliver. It was a pleasure to work collaboratively with the Uganda medical teams and recognise the very different challenges that they face compared to those that we have in the UK. Infectious diseases such as malaria and HIV present unique challenges and add significant complexity to other presentations such as trauma. We also had to problem solve when it came to resources, for example, during our first day in the Emergency Department, we filled plastic gloves with water to provide a solution for pressure ulcer prevention.

We quickly realised that there was a thirst for teaching on early recognition and resuscitation, so tailored a lot of our formal teaching towards this. As the only paediatrician, I enjoyed teaming up with my colleagues from other specialities to deliver A-E teaching, sepsis talks and neonatal life support sessions. I especially rated the Baby Natalie mannequins which I was able to borrow from Lira University in order to teach neonatal resuscitation.

A real success of the trip was spending some time on the Neonatal Unit identifying challenges using the CPAP machine that had been donated on a previous trip. We created a new algorithm for identifying babies who would benefit from it the most and delivered a teaching session to around 12 members of neonatal staff. After each having a go at setting it up, they realised that it wasn’t as intimidating as they thought and we were so chuffed to see the machine being used the next day. It is an exciting time for the Neonatal Unit who will hopefully be moving into a new and improved ward in the coming months. This should solve a lot of the challenges that they are currently facing around space, access to oxygen and lack of equipment. The team in Lira are already very keen for Poole Africa Link to support with some teaching following the big move.

Overall, I found the trip to Lira to be an incredibly enriching experience and I definitely learned as much as I taught! The two weeks were filled with a combination of formal and informal teaching, service improvement, provision and training on equipment and getting immersed in a totally new culture. I am already excited to return to Lira in the future and to build on my experiences.