Saving Lives With Emergency Care in Rural Uganda

Thanks to your help with a successful fundraising drive in September and October, GECC will now be able to expand its programming into Kenya!  GECC had the opportunity to obtain a three-year $100,000 matching grant, and due to your help, GECC successfully raised $24,000 of the $33,000 needed for the first year of the program!

This is exciting news for GECC and for medical services in Kenya.  As you know, GECC has been training midlevel providers in emergency care (Emergency Care Practitioners or ECPS) over the past 5 years in rural Uganda.  With their new skills to treat acute and emergency conditions, these ECPs are saving lives on a daily basis.

Now GECC plans to partner with a renowned teaching institution in Kenya, Kenya Medical Training College (KMTC), to train midlevel providers in emergency care there as well.  Currently, there are no emergency physicians in all of Uganda and only one in Kenya (compared to 45,000 emergency physicians in the U.S.!).  By training midlevel providers in acute and emergency care (much like nurse practitioners or physicians’ assistants in the U.S.), GECC is able to rapidly scale up emergency care to those who need it most. 

Prior to starting the emergency care program in Uganda, patients used to wait, on average, 26 hours to be seen by a physician after arriving to the hospital.  Now patients with emergency conditions are seen and treated rapidly, and they are surviving from easily treatable conditions such as malaria, pneumonia, and trauma.  Due to your help, Kenyan patients will now receive this care as well! 

Thank you for being part of creating sustainable change and improving the lives of others around the world who are less fortunate.  As always, please tell friends and family about the important work that you are doing through your support and ask that they help as well.  Together we are making a difference!

With gratitude,

Stacey