Health Care Project:

During the last 30 years, people in Katakwi district have suffered a lot of rebel groups of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), that are worldwidely known for raping children or using them as child soldiers, and of the Karimojong, a wild and violent tribe living in the North-Eastern part of Uganda.

Until today, many people live in huge refugee camps under devastating hygienic conditions and far away from their former villages. AIDS/ HIV and lethal diseases such as malaria or tuberculosis spread around. Furthermore, big parts of the infrastructure of the camps have been destroyed by a big flood in September 2007.

That is why the inhabitants of the refugee camps have to trek long distances to access markets, their garden for food, sources of water, schools and health care facilities.

Since there is no appropriate mean of transport available in these refugee camps, people have to walk approximately 12 kilometers to the next Health Care Centre III (HCC III) and up to 50 kilometers to the district hospital (HCC IV). Many sick people, particularly women with complications during their pregnancy, die on their way to the hospital and seriously sick people, that are not able to walk to the next HCC, normally die in their houses without any medical treatment.

Having analyzed the gaps within the health care delivery system in Katakwi through a needs assessment with leaders and health workers of Magoro, Omodoi and Usuk Sub-county, FABIO in partnership with the European Section of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP-Europe) now starts implementing an appropriate and affordable transportation system (means of transport are mainly bicycle ambulances and motorcycle ambulances (bicycles or motorcycles with attached carts specially designed for transportation of sick people)) within the already existing health care delivery system, that Katakwi officials can maintain on their owns. As experts of ITDP-Europe who have implemented this kind of transportation system for better access to HCCs in Ghana, Senegal, ………………, have pointed out, that appropriate means of communication played a critical role for the efficiency of health care delivery systems, a

communication system (based on radio calls, fixed landlines and mobile phones) has become part of the Health Care Project.