African Caesarean and child birth in Mukono Health Centre Uganda: a short documentary

Recently the Mukono Health Centre recieved two volunteers who were going to help out in the hospital for 2,5 months. One of these volunteers was a midwife. Every day she told me the stories about the deliveries in the Health Centre. Besides the fact that she delivered about ten times more babies a month than at her job in a Dutch hospital the conditions wherein these children were delivered was also very different. Interested by her stories and by request of the director of the hospital I decided to go film at the Health Centre for two days. I got the privilege to also be able to film a delivery and a caesarean section. Tragically enough the caesarean section didn’t go without complications and it was impossible to save the baby. Plagued with moral and ethical dillema’s while editing this movie I finally decided to show the uncensored truth. I hope this short documentary can add to the realisation that a lot has to be done to improve the healthcare in developing countries and to stimulate aid aimed on doing exactly that.

This documentary was also made to give healthcare volunteers an idea about the situations they can encounter when volunteering in a small government Health Centre in Uganda. Government health centers rely fully on the financial support of the government. The patients recieve medical care for free, but the resources are very limited. The medical personel in these facilities don’t have a lot of modern medical equipment to help their patients so in many cases they have to improvise in order to help people. The Mukono Health Centre sees over 50.000 patients yearly and the maternity unit sees about 700 pregnant women a month. They deliver about 300 monthly. If you are interested in volunteering in this Health Centre or support them in any other way send me a message.