

Mbale, Uganda: Five Years if You’re lucky
Season 1 Episode 107 | 27m 26sVideo has Closed Captions
There are many heroes in the world and The Good Road crew meets two such heroes in Uganda.
There are so many heroes in the world of philanthropy and The Good Road crew learns so much from these heroes. Hosts Earl Bridges and Craig Martin meet two such heroes in Uganda. Their journey to find them begins in a Matatu that takes them through the countryside to a series of geographic gems discovering all kinds of bizarre, funny, and interesting Ugandan cultural details along the way.
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The Good Road is presented by your local public television station.
Distributed nationally by American Public Television

Mbale, Uganda: Five Years if You’re lucky
Season 1 Episode 107 | 27m 26sVideo has Closed Captions
There are so many heroes in the world of philanthropy and The Good Road crew learns so much from these heroes. Hosts Earl Bridges and Craig Martin meet two such heroes in Uganda. Their journey to find them begins in a Matatu that takes them through the countryside to a series of geographic gems discovering all kinds of bizarre, funny, and interesting Ugandan cultural details along the way.
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Uganda is a place of wondrous natural beauty, bustling cities, and idyllic villages.
The African Great Lakes, including Lake Victoria, pepper it's borders.
It's also home to a tiny, cramped, neonatal intensive care unit that serves a region with a population of about 4 million.
That NICU produces a sea of statistics about infant mortality and birth rates, but for the mothers and babies who end up there, the only critical number is how much weight the baby has gained or lost each day.
At the center of these swirling statistics, we met a family with two young children, a couple of medical degrees, and an exceptional lifestyle.
The family was called to Mbale, Uganda from the UK, though not in the traditional missionary sense, you know, called by God.
They don't identify as religious.
They felt the simple call of human need.
[music playing] Kathy is a neonatologist, and Adam is an anesthesiologist, and they have two beautiful young daughters.
They hail from the UK, and despite having worked and traveled all over the world, they've decided Mbale, Uganda, is the place that they like to raise their little family.
We're headed from the capital, Kampala, to Mbale Regional Referral Hospital where Kathy and Adam operate out of.
They run a charity devoted to newborn health care called, Born on the Edge.
We're looking forward to introducing you to Kathy, Adam, and the work they do, but it's about a four to five hour journey, and there's a lot to see along the way.
One of the cool things about this trip right here is leaving Kampala, going through Jinja, crossing the Nile, and heading over to Mbale is that you get to see the towns, you get to see in this area the swamp lands.
Really things I think that people don't think of what they think of Uganda.
Anytime Craig says, stop the van, that's when the trouble begins.
We can eat this if we can just get it out of the hole.
Where did Earl die?
[laughter] It was a Muslim congregation that was getting together.
We were welcomed in with peace, and love, and brotherhood, and we were almost converted.
[speaking foreign language] After the traditional Ugandan circumcision ritual, ill advised lizard hunt, and the Muslim revival, we were only about halfway to Mbale and on the shores of Lake Victoria.
As Africa's largest lake and second largest in the world by some measures, a small detour seemed in order.
Followed by a sampling of the local fair, silverfish.
[laughter] We arrived in Mbale late in the day and prepared for an early start.
Kathy and Adam's day starts like any family with young children, but it quickly diverges as Kathy leaves the secure compound they call home and heads to Mbale Regional Hospital.
Adam won't be too far behind her.
They founded Born on the Edge to improve newborn health care worldwide.
Mbale Regional Hospital is their first and largest project.
Their goals are to educate local health care providers, develop and implement modern health care systems, and create sustainable practices, in theory.
In reality, they do all that and 1,000 other things.
Kathy explains that the Mbale Regional Hospital's funded by the Ugandan Ministry of Health, and serves a population of 4 million people in the region.
Due to space limitations and crowding, visitors, and even some patients, spend most of their time outside.
We're in the neonatal unit.
Because it's so small, and we had space for 10 mothers to sleep, now we haven't got anywhere for anyone to sleep.
So they have to sleep outside, which is fine if it's a nice day like today.
They can sit out here.
They can-- they will put their stoves down here and they cook.
But it it rains, all of these people will try and squeeze into that tiny space in there.
So if its power's out, it's raining and it's nighttime.
Right?
It must just be horrific.
I mean, this is a super busy hospital.
We have about 10,000 deliveries a year.
So if I can give you a comparison to a hospital back home in the UK, a busy hospital in the UK would deliver about 6,000 or 7,000 a year.
When I first moved here, why would you have that many children?
You have so little food to feed those babies.
Then when you actually begin to talk to friends and patients, you realize that yes they have eight or nine, but they lost two when they were a baby.
They lost another one from meningitis.
They lost another one from a road traffic accident.
Another one from malaria, and actually, they've only got three that are alive.
So to get from 0 to 5 here-- Right.
--it's just such an achievement.
Hats off to anyone here who makes it to five-years-old because it's not easy to get there.
Kathy takes me, and a Western medical professional Minoj, to where she spends most her time, the neonatal intensive care unit.
They've slept here for months Wow.
Good morning.
[cries] The first time I walked into the NICU, I was just shocked.
It's hot, it's open air, it's chaotic, it's loud, it's cramped.
You can't walk very far without touching somebody, and you're largely touching someone the whole time.
My daughter started out in NICU in the US, but she was very far from this.
I think I've probably forgotten a little bit what it's like.
The single biggest barrier to successful outcomes is what?
Space.
Space?
Yeah.
The babies are so close they spread all their infections.
We spread infections to each other.
You feel like you want to wash your hands and you're stuck in that tiny corner there.
This particular NICU is intended for how many babies?
10.
Well, we have more than that.
When we designed it, we had these beds here, so that was for the mother to sleep on.
And I have got photos when we first opened with a mother sleeping here.
We're doing kangaroo if it was a small baby or if not, then the baby could go in the couch at the end.
And now we can have up to seven babies on every bed.
You have to turn away?
We never turn away, we just squeeze.
There's no where to refer them to.
This is it?
This is it.
Awesome.
Perfect.
[cries] You're working almost six days out of a week.
Pretty much.
I'm always on the phone if they need-- - It takes so much.
How do you do it?
- If you enjoy something, and you're passionate about it, you don't mind.
It's not a joke, you know.
No one pays me to come to work.
I came back to work when my baby was three-weeks-old.
If I didn't come to work, no one's going to ever replace you.
So to see those mothers come back with a baby that's a life-- It's an aspect of seeing the mother's face before and after.
Right, Minoj, there's room for you here.
I don't know if I could do it.
I might do it for a month or two, but somebody that's been here for so long, that's true passion.
Wow.
Kathy had some work to do.
So we caught up with Adam in between his lectures at the medical school, and a few surgeries he was overseeing the anesthesia for.
I just came out of the neonatal clinic a second ago.
I'm sweating, it's hot, and it's open air like this, and shocking at some level.
And in the meantime, while Kathy is over there, you're here.
I mean, you're just lecturing, I believe.
Yes, doing some teaching with the medical students.
But I thought you did anesthesia.
Well, I do anesthesia, but what I was teaching today was just teaching basic principles of how to assess a sick patient for a medical student.
So teaching them some good basic skills.
So Kathy helps to run the neonatal unit, and spends most of her time there.
I find myself somehow getting involved in everything from fixing broken equipment, to helping by putting a surgical complex.
So I go to the meetings and give them some technical advice.
Designing curriculum in the university.
Trying to make sure we have drugs in stock.
Donations overseas.
Pretty much anything.
Adam had to head in to surgery, and as he did, we found out the water had just stopped working.
These conditions are extreme, but through their partnership with the hospital, they've made real progress.
The difficult but encouraging numbers around the NICU say it all.
They hadn't looked at the data before, and they found they have found that first 120 admissions and we had a 52% mortality.
So that's like 60 something babies died, and most of them die within the first 24 hours that they've been admitted.
So we didn't need much space because if they come in and they die, it is kind of easy.
So when we designed our new neonatal ward, based on extrapolating those numbers, we feel we need space for about 10 babies.
Last month, we hit 209 admissions.
So we've almost doubled our admission rate, and our mortality has now dropped to about 15%, 16%.
So we have about between 20 and 30 deaths a month, which is still horrible to look at, you know, when you have your big file each month of who's died.
It does make you feel sad, but compared to if we'd had a 52% mortality of 209 babies, that's 105 babies dying.
I definitely couldn't have coped with that.
I'd have left long ago.
The increase in admittance and the decrease in mortality is amazing, but success has consequences.
As more babies survive and people arrive from farther and farther away because of the hospital's reputation, it exacerbates the space issue.
And not only that, it can be very hard on those who come into Mbale from all over the region.
Some mothers struggle to live here.
It's like me going to London and trying to live off takeaways and in a hotel for however long you're in hospital, and it's so expensive here.
They can't live off their own land.
They're buying all the time.
So it's really not sustainable.
These are families.
It's just not one woman who happened to come in on the ambulance.
You're really displacing a whole family with the siblings, and the other family members.
I mean, it's really hard.
They come here, and you're right, they'll come and they'll have one attendant with them, and it's normally an auntie or friend.
The father we don't often see them, but we do occasionally.
The mother comes here with the attendant.
The attendant then has had enough.
She's got her own family to look after.
So you've got a mother left here on her own whose post-delivery.
She's got pain.
It's hard for her to move.
She would need someone to look after her, but she's often here on her own.
So there's a lot of bargaining with them, you know, and explanations that they have to stay here to complete their treatment.
This is Sauda and her husband, Denis, live here in Mbale, and so in some ways, have it much easier than others, but their daughter still requires 24-hour care, and at least one of the parents to be there the entire time.
Often that means they're outside to get the baby sun or practicing quote, "kangaroo care," by swaddling the baby against their chest for warmth and skin to skin contact.
When you brought your baby here, did you think that you would be able to leave with your baby healthy?
I feared you know.
I've never seen such.
I was told, she carried the cloth where they would put the dead body.
So when you came, you didn't bring clothing for your baby to leave with a nice dress because you felt like you were having to-- A dead body.
That you would leave with your dead body.
I was surprised.
I never felt that before.
Dr. Kathy is a special woman.
Very special.
She loves babies.
Has that love, much love for babies.
I saw you, and you're like the third baby on a bed with five.
You've got two babies on either side of you, and you spend most of your days there beside your baby.
Is that correct?
Yeah.
You have to sit around the oxygen.
When it goes off, you have to put it back.
So if you're two people it will help you, one comes out to rest while the other is inside.
When she gets tired, she comes outside, I come back.
So you replace her?
Yeah.
You're-- That's what we do.
And you have a job as well?
You're a teacher?
I'm a teacher professionally.
And now you have this responsibility?
And I'm a-- And you're a kangaroo.
Yes.
[laughs] I feel good really when I put it on.
Yeah, I really feel good.
In fact, one of the challenges I'm seeing, by the time I've stayed here, I've spent everything I've saved on feeding.
So you spend most of the evenings in here?
Yeah.
Do you have a place to go home and stay or do you mostly stay here at the clinic?
I mostly stay here.
I go home maybe one day, something I'm going to pick.
Go, pick up breakfast, come back.
Lunchtime, I go pick lunch.
Supper, and maybe get her something to eat at night.
at night, she eats.
[laughter] Well, she is a mother.
Yeah.
Demis was headed home to prepare lunch for he and Sauda We tagged along to see what it was like for a family living in Mbale.
All right, we're on our way to go see Demis's house.
Can't see anything going wrong here.
Never seen a Mzungu She's never seen a Mzungu.
He's scared.
Who is this one?
Hello.
Let's see what I did with this thing.
So this is one.
You have three, and then two, three on the other side.
Six in this one little box.
Six more behind it.
This is where we're going to bring our baby, me and my wife.
What do you worry about as a father?
My biggest worry when I bring in my baby, in most cases is feeding them.
I already know they are delicate.
So that is my worry.
Every morning when I wake up, I pick up my stove, move outside, prepare some water.
Where does the water come from?
We have a tub outside.
And you just bring it in?
--it is on and off.
So whenever it comes, you make sure you get enough.
Prepare some simple, simple food for my wife.
At times, I prepare.
At times, I have to buy.
In a day, you're using something like, 20,000.
Against 300,000 a month.
That's a ton of-- I don't know how you do it.
And you're an artist.
That's the first thing I noticed as soon as I come in.
This is the circumcision sequence.
Remember this same thing.
To be honest, it makes me nervous just looking at these.
Why doesn't he look happy?
[laughs] When they're cutting you, you initially feel the pain and then fall down.
They pick you, get hold of you, get the legs, and then-- They keep going?
Yeah.
Forcefully after they finished.
Wow.
Yeah, there's no half-circumcision.
Yeah, they have to complete it.
And then the other one, this is the, Malwa Yeah.
There is that one with millet, and then there's and then there is that one with maize.
that one with maize is weak.
and then that one with millet, it's made by [inaudible],, and it can make you drunk real fast.
[laughs] OK. We might just get a chance to do that tonight.
After eating lunch with Sauda, Demis headed back to work where he teaches art at a local high school.
All right, so we're here with Demis.
He's an art teacher, and so he's going to introduce us to his class.
We'll say hi to him.
Now is our cue.
[speaking foreign language] [laughter] Earl and Craig.
[laughter] When he finished work and after he dropped off dinner for Sauda,, he offered to show us where they make malwa, the fermented local beverage he had immortalized on campus.
How could we say no?
And it's strong, I can already tell.
Yeah.
That one, if you take that one..
This one is the beginning of the end.
[laughs] Wow.
What do you think, brother?
I will tell you, it's better than Coors.
[laughter] I'm not sure we're fans of the stuff, but the experience made a biker bar seem boring.
So when you see the mountain, does this make you feel like you're at home?
Yeah, it feel good.
Where you came from, it's right up here?
Yeah.
Is it in that direction?
Yeah.
It's a night out for this new father, so we took him to dinner where he enjoyed the reprieve from this stressful time in his life.
Cheers.
[laughs] Hopefully health and family.
It's Sunday morning, and Demis is no doubt headed back to the hospital, but for Kathy and Adam, this is their only day off.
They graciously invite us to their home so we can get a better sense of their lives here.
Well, we didn't know how long we were coming for, maybe one year or however long, so we lived here with next to no furniture, or anything, for about a year.
We had one sofa, one bed, and then when we decided we were staying, we branched out a little bit and got a bit more furniture.
So it's a bit more like home now.
When we came back last year, we brought back photos and things, and put them up too.
Yeah, very much feels like home.
What was the decision to come here?
I mean, again, out of all the places?
We've always wanted to work overseas.
The problem had been, we never worked overseas together.
We got married in 2007, and then, we spent some time living together because I was in the military, and then Kathy worked in Thailand.
We'd been living apart for a long time.
So the most important thing was to find somewhere we can live together.
And apart, right?
Just to be clear, you guys rarely see each other.
Well, we do see each other.
At least, we see each other in the evenings.
There you go.
That has to be something.
No, we do pretty well.
So we were looking, people recommended lots of places in Uganda.
Mbale just happened to be the first place we visited, and we liked it so much, we came back.
But what were the things that you were weighing though when you're deciding, OK, yes, we want to work overseas, and we also want to have children?
It has to be safe for the children, that's the main thing.
And when we visited here, we saw two or three families with lots of children, expats or Mzungus,, and they said, it was safe living here.
So that's the most important thing.
What's different about raising kids you think here versus all of your friends from school?
They're so much more relaxed, I think.
I mean, they spend all their time outside.
Even when we want to be in, they want to be out.
You know, even young children of my friends back home, they spend a lot of time, I think, inside on computers, on iPads, and things like that.
But you don't have computers?
We have an iPad.
We do have computers, us two, and then [?
charlotte ?]
has an iPad, or as she calls it, an iPadam because it comes from Adam, but anyway, We personally, own an iPadam It's your friend, is it?
Hello.
Hi, Patience.
How are you?
You look very smart today.
Are you just from church?
Yeah.
How is mummy?
How is baby?
It's possible they miss out on stuff.
You know, I see my friends going to family farm trips, and that kind of thing, or adventure playgrounds, or even perhaps in London they're going to feed the ducks.
With that said, we can go for a walk in the morning, and we see a cow delivering a calf on the side of the road too.
So they have cousins?
They have loads of cousins.
Yes.
So, do you miss that?
Yeah, I really miss them, and seeing them grow up, and they wouldn't have any idea really who I am.
The beauty is of Skype now that you can speak to them and see them.
So they recognize us, and the ones that are a bit older, remember us, but and vice versa, you know, they want to see these ones and see how they're growing up.
We came probably to stay for maybe a year, but the longer we stay here, the longer we will stay here.
So using work as an example, in the NHS, I mean, there are lots of gaps, but they don't miss us.
Whereas here, if we left there, would be a big gap.
And as the longer you stay, the more you get involved in.
The more responsibilities you have and the more you take on, and so it's harder than to leave.
Everything that we do, we try and make it sustainable.
But there's a period to develop sustainability?
Of course, but we've been here now 2 and 1/2 years.
With Kathy in the neonatal unit, when she first came, they would never have been able to do what they can do now.
We went back to the UK last year to have Luenna, for seven weeks, and things were-- almost nothing changed.
If you're always thinking about making sure the things you do are sustainable, even if you had to leave, let's say if something happened to one of our families, or even to one of us, then hopefully, maybe 60% or 70% of what we do would remain.
This is the period of time, this is really your opportunity to make, you know, your money.
You know, these next 10 or 15 years.
So how much does that factor into?
What are you making money for?
If I think about what I need money for, one is, children to go to school, and the other thing is when you retire, you have to go to live happily.
We don't need much.
Depends on what you want.
So it's not about the money.
The hospital doesn't even pay them.
They only survive on donations, and it's not about faith or religion.
Why do they do it?
Well, we got some idea on the last day at the hospital.
Meet Harriet and baby, Dora.
Your hair's very beautiful today.
Maybe you even knew you were going to go into television, and it's very lovely.
Do you recall how much she weighed and how much does she weigh now?
She was weighing 1.1, and now she's 3.1.
She's huge.
You know it.
[laughter] She looks really happy now.
I was so, so afraid of it.
I lost hope completely.
I even told her that maybe just let me go back home.
It was [inaudible],, but she did a lot.
She just returned my hope in me, and she gave me happiness again.
indeed I'm now happy And then I remembered that, I'm not the only one.
We are many going through this situation So once, when I was on the inside there, I also told them, at least we have a smile God's smiling.
Two smiles.
Two smiles, that's right.
Thank you, Harriet.
Really lovely to see you.
Thank you, doctor.
Keep in touch.
Tell us how she's doing, when she's sitting, when she is walking.
She's now laughing She can laugh.
Can you laugh at me?
I'm not very funny.
Mamboso and her baby, Miracle, are more than just another success story.
Mamboso has also been trained to support and encourage other mothers in the clinic.
It's a miracle sometimes to see what Kathy and her team are able to do for women that come in with babies that are very, very sick.
Yeah, but appreciate Dr. Kathy for the good work she has done because I couldn't expect this baby, but God is great, the baby survived.
I try to educate those mothers.
My dear, do this and this.
If you take taking the advice of the doctor, you're going to get what you want.
You're a great success story, and as you say, now you're able to help other women as well.
That's brilliant.
So I thank Kathy for the good work that she has done.
I've heard that.
That's not the first time I've heard that she's done good work.
She's done a good work.
The list of people they've touched and the lives they've saved goes on and on.
Kathy and Adam may not be from Mbale, or even Uganda, but they're fighting to make a difference in the community they love.
Countless people have benefited from the work they do, but to hear them tell it, they feel like they've benefited most of all.
No, they're not from there, and yes, Mbale is a long way from the UK, and the grandparents, and the financial success and professional rewards of the National Health Service, but they belong there, and by their own words, they may never leave.
There's so much more to explore and we want you to join us on "The Good Road."
For more in-depth content meet us on the internet at thegoodroad.tv.
Hear more great stories, connect to organizations, and make sure you download our podcast, "Philanthropology."
Funding for "The Good Road" has been provided by.
Every road is a good road When you're behind the wheel of a Toyota Hybrid From the Toyota Venza and Sienna to Highlander Hybrid and Rav IV Hybrid And with available all-wheel drive these vehicles are designed to go the distance wether your driving to work, school or down the coast of Tanzania Proud sponsor of The Good Road, Toyota Let's go places Tomorrow's breakthroughs start with the determination and inspiration of today.
AMD helps solve the world's toughest and most interesting challenges by creating high performance computing technologies.
And by "The Great Courses Plus," hundreds of topics from expert instructors to help you expand your knowledge.
Available for streaming anytime, anywhere.
And by "Share More Stories," helping companies understand humans one story at a time.
[music playing] And by Uncommon Giving.
The Generosity Company.
The Good Road is presented by your local public television station.
Distributed nationally by American Public Television