More than 60,000 people survive on a section of land one and a half square miles. This camp is the largest of 28 sites in the Lira district of Uganda where Northwest Medical Teams' volunteers serve. It is just one of many that is home to 1.6 million destitute people in Uganda.
Without adequate healthcare, food, sanitation or hope of education, thousands of children and their families struggle to endure in these camps. Years of civil war marked by child abduction and enslavement, looting, and violence continue to drive hundreds of families to these camps each week.
Brenda Maldonado, a Northwest Medical Teams nurse from Sultan, Wash., reports that serious healthcare issues accompany the emotional pain of these people. "Physical malnutrition is rampant among the babies and children in these campgrounds. Intestional worms are epidemic. Education is severely lacking. How could anyone teach with a ratio of one teacher to more than 125 students?"
Maldonado along with Sandy Stone, a volunteer nurse from Portland, Ore., and Dr. Carl Erling, a volunteer family practice physician from Seattle, Wash., will serve four weeks in Uganda. Along with two local clinicians, the team treats an average of 400 people each day. Seven teams and 22 volunteers have worked in the camps since Northwest Medical Teams began sending medical workers in September 2004.
"These young people have been deeply wounded and scarred for life by what they have seen and experienced," adds Maldonado. "But we are making a difference. Life is improving for the thousands of people we have touched here."