Clean Hands: Uganda
The vision of CHU is to promote basic health care in Uganda. After Ellen's summer (2007) in Kampala and surrounding areas within Uganda, she was concerned about the lack of basic health education among adults and children. Through Cornerstone Development, she was able to teach a basic health promotion class to a group of mentors living in the Street Corps houses. Initially, there were five of these houses within Kampala and two more both Gulu and Lira. As of 2010, there is an additional Youth Corps house in Kampala for girls who were former prostitutes.
This program is designed to support basic health needs of children in Uganda and beyond. We have hired local Ugandan nurse, Wilter Ololia, to work at Cornerstone in Kampala. She manages the health records of the 100+ kids in the Street Corps houses. She manages the healthcare of these children from attending clinics with the children to organizing appropriate immunizations to teaching health promotion classes. She has secured clean water for all the children, taught many classes, and encouraged many forms of self expression.
Through this initiative we developed it is our hope to create a health promotion curriculum appropriate for the children of Uganda. This curriculum will be given to local Ugandan teachers, social workers, and nurses who then teach health promotion to children. Beforem the program, these children ate only posha (flour and water) and beans twice daily, with greens and matoke (bananas) once a week with the addition of occasional meat. Currently, the children are eating greens multiple times a week, meat at least once a week, and local fruits and vegetables almost daily.
Another current need for these children is dental care. With no flouride fortified city water, and little access to toothbrushes growing up, dental carries and mouth pains are common. Any assistnce either financial or dental care is much needed and would be greatly appreciated.
