Developing community mental health in Kagando

In a recent trip to Uganda (October, 2017), Hugh Burgess and John Taylor visited Kagando Hospital where Jamie’s Fund is supporting an initiative that is taking mental health care into the community.  Here they outline the approach Kagando is taking.

Kagando is a busy Church of Uganda hospital, not far from the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, and it provides a wide range of health services to the local community.

We were impressed with the work being done there and especially with the very busy maternity ward.  It was a big surprise to meet inpatients being treated for leprosy, a disease I thought had disappeared.

Kagando is fortunate to have two trained psychiatric nurses.  They have mainly been working in general medicine  but with funding from Jamie’s Fund, they are being released for part of the week to go out into the community.  Jamie’s Fund has also provided funds for a motorcycle to facilitate this.

The model they are using is to send out a message to a local community to invite those with mental health needs to meet the mental health team at a given place and day.     Patients’ conditions are then diagnosed and a course of treatment planned.  This is then delivered by the nurses travelling to patients’ homes or local villages on a regular basis.

Travelling to a clinic along “murram” roads.

The advantage of this approach is that it helps patients who are very poor or distant from the hospital to get treatment that might otherwise be unavailable to them.

We felt privileged to attend some of these clinics and to see the plan in action.  Here the clinic is being held under a mango tree on the edge of a village.  Five patients were diagnosed here.

A clinic under a mango tree.

Follow-up treatment was arranged for a few days later.

We were hugely impressed by the compassionate and professional care that was shown by the Kagando team and are delighted by the progress that is already being made in finding some of those who most need treatment and care.  This is being delivered in the community, which not only reduces that difficulty faced by patients in getting to hospital but also eliminates the costs of hospital care that can often deter patients and their families seeking care in the first place.