Community outreaches

Bwindi Community Hospital is much more than just a Hospital where sick people come to receive treatment. Our community teams make up a large part of the services provided by the Hospital. They:

Take education and treatment to remote areas including Batwa pygmy settlements each week.

Immunize children in villages where there are no other services available.

Bring health discussions directly into every household through monthly radio shows.

Have trained volunteer health workers, called Village Health Teams/ Village Health Promoters (VHT/VHP) in every village.

Take HIV testing and treatment to places where the people never dreamed of receiving services.

Enable women to get birth control without having to come to Hospital.

Community health insurance scheme.

Every year a Household Survey of all homes in the Bwindi area is conducted to measure the progress of the Community Health interventions led by the Hospital. To see the latest survey click here So many people in the Bwindi area cannot reach the Hospital because of the poor roads and the absence of public transport. We look after people who come from a day’s walk in any direction, and our outreach programs reach out to the most remote parts of the Bwindi region.

“Amazingly we struggle to raise the money to run these brilliant community health programmes. When visitors come to the Hospital they see our buildings and think that the people in Bwindi get decent health care. But if you travel into the local villages and see children collecting water from muddy pools, people who are too poor to have a mosquito net and Batwa pygmies without proper sanitation facilities you realize immediately that health improvement begins in the home. This is where we have to be too.”

Dr. Birungi Mutahunga, Executive Director