Film and Research Updates

While I’m not busy in the hospital, I’ve been preparing for the film and research projects that will occupy most of my time here. Mostly, I have had a large number meetings with various potential collaborators and persons knowledgeable about logistics for working in resettlement communities for internally displaced persons (IDP) in Northern Uganda. In Kampala, I’ve had meetings with the Uganda Human Rights Commission, HEPS Uganda (an NGO devoted to promoting access to essential medical care), members of the Ministry of Health, and a professor at Makerere School of Public Health, Dr. Orach, whose previous research looked at awareness levels of human rights in IDP camps. He was happy to collaborate on the projects, which means I now have to go through the review board at the school of public health here, which I’m told won’t take more than two weeks so long as my proposal is in the right format. In Gulu, I had a wide range of meetings. I met with a NGO that helps bring medications for HIV to patients homes that are too isolated from care. This was a meeting set up by Brother Carlo, the radiologist at Lacor. The next morning after this meeting, I met with an American evangelical missionary-surgeon working and teaching at the medical school in Gulu. I was put in contact with her through a friend of Mr. and Mrs. M. She provided a lot of information on traveling around the area, advice on maps and data showing medical services for the region, and suggested some possible interpreters. After meeting with her, she dropped me off in her SUV at the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)in Gulu, where staff informed me about health sector meetings for the region that take place on a monthly basis in the city. These meetings are attended by government agencies, NGOs, health care professionals, and other non state actors involved in health care like the OHCHR). They provide another major avenue for raising grievances about the community’s barriers to accessing essential medical care. I hope to attend these meetings in the coming months. After leaving the OHCHR office, I went next door to the World Health Organization’s local office. Staff there were very helpful and friendly; they even showed me two short documentary films they made about health burdens of IDPs while living in the camps. They also gave me contacts for a number of physicians working in Gulu who may be able to help with making connections in the communities involved with the research. Last quick update, John Binford (another Yale medical student for those who don’t him) will be arriving next Monday to share the fun and work for the next two months.