Baby Ronald
Ronald is just 3 weeks old. He was born in Uganda, about 50 miles away from the capital, Kampala.
Baby Ronald was born with a blockage in his intestines. He wasn’t able to feed properly and was not able to keep milk down. Without an operation to remove the blockage he would have continued to lose weight and would not survive.
Ronald’s mother had taken him to a hospital near to their home but they were not able to treat him because they did not have any surgical tools for operating on babies. His mother brought him to the Mulagao National Referral and Teaching hospital in Kampala.
By the time they arrived there Ronald’s mother was extremely worried for her newborn baby.
Dr Nasser Kakembo is the paediatric surgeon at the Mulagao hospital. He is one of only four paediatric surgeons in Uganda looking after a population of 20 million children.
Kids Operating Room installed three new operating rooms in Dr Kakembo’s hospital in December 2019.
Dr Kakembo operated on baby Ronald this week and was able to remove the blockage using the right instruments designed for surgery on new born babies. With the right equipment and the skill of Dr Kakembo Ronald has had a successful operation.
Ronald will now leave hospital and will be able to feed properly, he will be able to grow up. Ronald’s mother is hugely relieved that her baby is ok.
The story could have been so different.
It’s not just Ronald and his families lives who have been impacted by this operation. Dr Kakembo needs more surgeons to train to be able to operate on children in Uganda. Without the operating rooms, there was no surgery for trainee surgeons to watch and learn from.
Kids Operating Room are supporting Ugandan men and women who want to train to be paediatric surgeons. There are now four trainee surgeons at the Mulago hospital. They are all gaining invaluable experience watching and learning from operations like Ronald’s.
With your help we can enable Dr Kakembo to carry out more operations on babies like Ronald.
And we can support the training of more surgeons so that Dr Kakembo won’t remain one of only four surgeons in the whole country who can operate on children.
