McMaster’s medical team makes their annual visit to Uganda

In October and November 2024, Professor Ally Prebtani, Dr. Rebecca Kruisselbrink, Dr. Ahraaz Wyne, Dr. Jessica Scott, Dr. Ghazal Haddad, Dr. Justin Senecal, and Ms. Sudduf Wyne, medical doctors and medical residents from McMaster University, made their annual visit to Uganda. The overall goal was to build capacity in healthcare in a holistic manner through education, clinical work, and community support in a sustainable and culturally sensitive manner based on local needs, requests, and resources.

A series of engagements and collaborations took place during this period where the team focused on Resident and Learner Education, teaching of Internal Medicine and Obstetrics Ugandan residents and medical students, providing mentorship and bedside teaching at Mulago Regional Referral Hospital and participating in grand rounds, mini rounds, SHO (Senior House Officer) rounds, postmortem rounds, journal clubs, mortality rounds and an ACLS session held for the learners.

The team also engaged in Clinical Work, participating in ward rounds (General Medicine, Obstetric Medicine, ICU) and specialty outpatient clinics (Rheumatology) at Mulago Regional Referral Hospital.

The team also visited a local primary school (St. Martin) to distribute donated items for children and witnessing improvement of the infrastructure at the site from the funds that were donated by fundraising efforts and various donors.

On this trip, medical supplies and equipment were donated to Mulago National Referral Hospital, Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital, the ACCESS program, and Cardiology & Endocrine clinics. The medical supplies distributed included blood pressure monitors, glucose strips and meters, oximeters, masks, mannequins for CPR training, and 10g monofilaments to check for foot sensation, setting-up of the microscope lab at Mulago for teaching of learners with the leadership of Mr. Innocent Twebaze. In addition, the team secured donations for prescription eyeglasses which were distributed to locals in need in Uganda.

Further reinforced during the visit, and an initiative that began many years ago, was subspecialty medical training for Ugandan physicians in many medical subspecialties to continue to building capacity.

This trip served also as an opportunity to share resources with the Ugandan health care team including complimentary access to UpToDate and the McMaster Textbook of Medicine, free virtual registration to the Canadian Endocrine Review Course, Canadian Endocrine Update, General Internal Medicine Review Course and distribution of the McMaster Red Book.

To promote cultural exchange and collaboration with McMaster’s Alumni living in Uganda, the OIA and Alumni Office coordinated a Global Ambassadors Dinner with Florence Nangendo and Narathius Asingwire, McMaster’s alumni from Uganda.

McMaster’s team had a chance to visit Aga Khan University Hospital in Kampala to discuss future collaborative efforts based on need; providing resident/learner educational support, CHEs (continuing health education) for peers/faculty, faculty/resident exchanges (Canada/Uganda), Internal Medicine & Endocrine specialty program development, and cross appointments for faculty.

Other engagements included presentations, discussion of research projects, creation of awards and scholarships and visits to local health organizations. Overall, this was a very fruitful trip with lots of engagement and collaboration to help build capacity and educate in a sustainable manner keeping in mind cultural sensitivity and attention to local needs and resources. This was done through collaboration in areas of education, clinical service, community support, and outreach programs.