THET

Health Links

Health Links are long-term partnerships between UK health institutions and their counterparts in developing countries. Links aim to improve health services in developing countries through the reciprocal exchange of skills, knowledge and experience between partners in the UK and those overseas. For more information on Health Links, please read on or contact us on +44 (0)20 7290 3892 or by email at info@thet.org.

Health Link in Focus

The Liverpool-Mulago-Partnership is a partnership linking Liverpool Women’s Hospital (and the University) with Mulago Hospital in Uganda. LMP is jointly directed by Dr Andrew Weeks and Dr Josaphat Byamugisha.

The Partnership has recently been awarded funding from the International Health Links Funding Scheme (IHLFS) to support the development of a high dependency unit in Mulago Hospital.

In order to ensure comprehensive evaluation of this initiative, Professor Louise Ackers, Dr Carol Julia Porter (Liverpool Law School) and Gavin Ackers- Johnson spent 5 weeks in Mulago during the summer of 2010 working with the Records Manager in the Obstetrics Department (Mr Steven Mwesige) to develop the records keeping facility and together produced the first Annual Benchmarking Report on Maternal and Perinatal Mortality at Mulago Hospital.

On returning to the UK and to continue to develop capacity in this area the project has been awarded two Commonwealth Professional Fellowships to enable the Deputy Manager of the records office (Mr Joseph Ddumba) and his assistant (Mr Joseph Kiggundu) to spend a month working alongside the evaluation team in Liverpool in February 2011.

This initiative, uniquely facilitating the exchange of non-clinical staff, will play a critical role in supporting sustainable data and patient management systems and contribute to the comprehensive evaluation of this innovative North-South Healthcare Partnership. The two fellows will travel to the UK for one month to develop skills in data management. Upon their return they will utilise these skills to help the department there to develop rigorous and sustainable data collection methods. This will not only be useful for the ongoing evaluation of the partnership, but it will also assist Mulago Hospital to monitor patient throughput and the quality of its services.

Further details and copies of the benchmarking report are available on the LMP website: www.liverpoolmulagopartnership.org. You can also visit the Liverpool-Mulago Partnership THET webpage.

Each month, THET will promote one Health Link on our website. If you would like to be selected as a THET Health Link of the Month, simply send us an update on the impact your Link has had, or include a case study. If there is someone in particular you feel is making a real difference and you would like us to acknowledge his/her achievements, please send in your stories at info@thet.org.