12/09/2025
🌟 A NEW DAWN FOR NEWBORNS IN RURAL UGANDA 🌟
"This baby you see here is two years old, but was brought in at 0.9 grams, the mother was in tears," says Zabia Hamba, a midwife at Budaka Health Center IV in eastern Uganda. "But look at her now, she's thriving. Her face is glowing, and there is a newfound radiance on her skin. You should see how delighted the parents are right now."
Just two years ago, the situation was dramatically different. Any newborn needing special care faced a dangerous 31-mile journey to the nearest referral hospital—a journey many didn't survive.
"We used to refer all newborns who needed special attention to Mbale. Every single one of them," Zabia recalls. "We didn't know much to do with newborn care beyond delivering."
Today, Budaka Health Center has a fully functional 20-bed Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), saving nearly 100 fragile newborns every month. This transformation is part of Bulamu Healthcare's work to establish or upgrade twelve NICUs across Uganda.
The impact extends beyond the facility itself:
• Surrounding districts now refer babies to Budaka instead of the overcrowded referral hospital
• Healthcare workers follow up with babies after discharge, visiting communities monthly
• A skills lab trains midwives from lower-level facilities, multiplying the impact
• Data-driven approaches help continuously improve care quality
"As a facility, I cannot tell you enough how happy we are," says Zabia, who is now the district mentor at the skills lab. "And personally, the gratitude even goes beyond that. I now have such commendable knowledge of the NICU, I feel like an expert."
This is what sustainable healthcare transformation looks like—building local capacity that continues to multiply its impact throughout the community. 💙
