Uganda 2014 Mission Recap

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This year David and Gana returned to Uganda for their yearly mission to distribute mosquito nets and hand out medications to communities in need. His recap from the trip is below. 

Our medical mission to Uganda (July 17 – July 28) was a huge success.  This year we served three communities over six days handing out 3,000 nets at each location.  We hired local doctors and nurses that saw approximately 14,000 people (many seeing a doctor for the first time), and we provided over $20,000 in medications to treat illnesses ranging from malaria to intestinal worms.  Somewhat as an afterthought, we purchased reading glasses and were surprised at how quickly they were handed out.  Next year this part of the mission will be expanded.

On the last day of the mission, our host in the community, Pastor Apollo, introduced us to seven people in dire need of surgery.  One woman needed to have her uterus removed and six people needed to have a hernia repaired.  Upon consultation with our group we decided to have these surgeries done and paid from our trip.  The total cost of these seven surgeries was an astonishing $1,200.  This is another area that we will expand next year by increasing the cost of the net and medications from $7 to $8 each.

Gana and I also visited a school near Lake Kyoga to distribute nets from our Ker & Downey Love-net program.  The school has approximately 300 students and each one received a Ker & Downey net.  It was interesting to actually do this because the community’s elders came out to personally thank us for doing this for the children.  There was a ceremony with speakers and entertainment and even I had to get up and talk to the attendees.  During the event we learned that the children had to walk nearly a mile from school to get fresh water as their local well had run dry.  Sounds like another community project in the making!

We returned back to the states knowing that through the efforts of many people we had potentially saved the lives of nearly 40,000 children by giving of nets, medicines, and providing surgeries.   It was a VERY successful trip!

To find out more about Ker & Downey’s Nets for Africa program or to donate, visit our philanthropy page. To stay up to date on all of Nets for Africa’s online content, “like” our Facebook page.

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