Contributing to the health of a population, especially its youngest members, means setting in motion a process of development — because when a child recovers, a community grows. The account of a volunteer from Fondazione Ambrosoli.
Today Uganda is one of the poorest countries in the world, ranking 164th out of 187 on the United Nations Human Development Index. Thirty-eight per cent of the population, and more than half of children under the age of five, live below the absolute poverty line of one dollar a day.
Economic poverty, as is often the case, is compounded by cultural poverty and a vision of children's futures shaped entirely by the survival of the family unit. In an attempt to secure the family's subsistence, for example, many children are withdrawn from school and put to work. Early marriage remains widespread, as does physical punishment, which is considered an "educational" method applied to children and women alike.
The overall picture is one of a childhood denied, from the very first days of life. In terms of quality of life for children, these figures translate into difficulty accessing sufficient and adequate nutrition, difficulty accessing clean water and sanitation, and difficulty making use of education and essential health services (vaccinations, antibiotics, and even simply mosquito nets to protect against malaria).
"A kiss for children here is not a kiss. It is a gentle breath from the mother blown onto her child's face. No smack of the lips — just warm air. The games children play here are not the usual games. There are grasshoppers to play with, and lizards to chase. Car tyres to roll along the ground. Puddles to splash in. There are trees to climb, mangoes to win. The duty of children here is not to put their toys back in their bedroom. It is to look after a younger sibling. At four years old, or perhaps even younger, a child spends the entire day with a baby brother or sister just a few months old, while their mother works. They do everything on their own. They tend to them, carry them on their back, bathe them, keep watch while they sleep, soothe them when they cry. They blow on their face. And the tantrums of children here are not tantrums like back home. They simply do not exist."
51 per cent of Ugandan families have no access to medical care due to their economic circumstances, and the absence of qualified healthcare personnel is dramatic (1.7 doctors are available per 10,000 inhabitants). In this context, life expectancy at birth barely exceeds 59 years (in Italy it is 82), and under-five child mortality is extremely high: 66 children per thousand live births (in Italy it is 4).
This is where the Dr. Ambrosoli Memorial Hospital operates — a former maternity dispensary transformed in the 1950s into a hospital by Father Giuseppe Ambrosoli, a highly skilled surgeon and Comboni missionary. The hospital is today an essential point of reference for healthcare in northern Uganda, in the Agago district. The third-best general hospital in Uganda, it serves a vast rural area where no real alternative source of care exists. And every day it makes a difference. The difference between life and death, for hundreds of patients, 70 per cent of whom are women and children under the age of five.
In the past year, 10,700 young patients were admitted to and treated in the paediatric ward, in many cases for the dramatic resurgence of malaria that has swept through northern Uganda following the suspension of the government's pest-control activities.
Precisely in light of a context in which children are among the most vulnerable groups, most exposed to disease, lack of care and difficulty accessing medical services, Fondazione Ambrosoli — which supports the Dr. Ambrosoli Memorial Hospital with financial resources and managerial expertise — reaffirms its commitment every day to the health of the youngest, to protecting the rights of childhood, and to the right of young Ugandans to a more dignified future.
Contributing to the health of a population, and especially of its youngest members, means contributing to its capacity to gain an education, to work, to generate income, and to set in motion a process of emancipation from poverty and of development. When a child recovers, a community grows.