By Carol Anders Correspondent
PLYMOUTH — Area Hospice and Palliative Care staff and volunteers heard first-hand of the needs for aid for palliative care in the country of Uganda.

Tuesday afternoon, Rose Kiwanuka, R.N. and a native Ugandan who lives in a small village, was a guest speaker for the local hospice. Kiwanuka has been in the United Sates for the last week speaking to various groups in the Michiana area. She works full-time as the National Coordinator of the Palliative Care Association of Uganda.
Palliative care is concerned, in part, with pain management for patients.
Pain medications include morphine that they are able to obtain in a powdered form that has to be mixed with water.
Her organization has become a “sister hospice” with the Center for Hospice and Palliative Care in this area.
In March, Roberta Spencer and Karen Smith-Taljaard, of CHAPC, traveled to several parts of Uganda to collect information on how the two countries can mutually help each other.
Michael Wargo, chief operating officer of CHAPC said, “We can learn muchfrom her (Kiwanuka) — she does so much with so little.”
Kiwanuka said half of the 32 million population of Uganda are age 15 and younger and the average life span of a male is 50 and the average is 52 for a female in her country.
“Only two percent of the people are over age 65,” she added.
Other statistics are even more devastating, she said. The country ranks 14th highest in the world for HIV/AIDS patients and 9th in the world for HIV/AIDS deaths.
“Fifty-seven percent of Ugandans die without seeing a physician or a nurse,” Kiwanuka said. “Doctors are scarce. There are only three medical schools in the country.”
According to Kiwanuka, that means that there is one doctor for every 25,000 patients in the cosmopolitan areas and one doctor for every 50,000 patients in rural areas.
At this time, her organization is trying to train nurses to be able to prescribe medications and then to train community volunteers to help with direct aid to patients. She is the only nurse in the organization who can train nurses to prescribe medications.
Kiwanuka also explained that they work through local “native healers” who already have the respect in the community and who are beginning to understand that western medicine can often help their patients. .
“Community volunteers work as a bridge between the nurses and the doctors,” she said.
Referring to what she has seen in the United States, Kiwanuka said, “Your nursing homes look like five-star hotels to me.”