Five Years & Vision 2020
Five years!! We completed the registration for Health Access Connect on November 28, 2014. I am thankful for the most rewarding five years of my life.
Today on Thanksgiving I am grateful for the privilege to be able to do the work that I do. To be able to spend every hour of my work life toward connecting poor people in remote villages to healthcare, and to do it in a sustainable way.
How I got interested in this issue
I first got interested in healthcare in remote villages during research that I conducted in Lake Victoria fishing villages. I was asking about fisheries management, livelihoods, migrations … lots of academic things. Yet almost all of the people whom I was interviewing were talking about access to basic social services: The health facilities are too far away, and people’s health suffers because of it. As an outsider to public health work at the time, the big puzzle to me was “Why are there people who are dying of HIV when free lifesaving healthcare is just 3 miles away?!”
Carolyne Ariokot and I started HAC because we are haunted by the inequality in the world. Why shouldn’t everyone have access to what they need to care for themselves and their loved ones? Health Access Connect is our response to that challenge. We can’t fix everything, but we can try to get healthcare closer to people.
Healthcare is personal
I look at my wife Nancy and my daughter Amiya. We have benefited from access to healthcare in so many ways:
- If we needed stitches or a broken bone set right, we were rushed to the hospital, and things turned out fine.
- As a child, I suffered from dangerous fevers that threatened my life, but my parents were able to access health workers who could diagnose and treat my condition.
- During my travels I have suffered from dengue fever, malaria, and pneumonia, all of which could have cost me my life if I had not been able to access a health worker and medicine.
- Amiya’s heart rate dropped dangerously low during the delivery, and she had to receive special monitoring and care. Had we not had access to healthcare, we may have lost her.
- Nancy suffered from postpartum hemorrhage after Amiya’s birth, which could have threatened her life if not treated. (Not matter where you live, upwards of 15% of pregnancies experience some kind of complication.)
Access to healthcare is personal to me and to everyone else.
Where are we going with this?
As I write this now, HAC has helped Ugandan health workers to serve over 20,000 patients in remote areas. We are currently helping serve over 42 villages and 1,350 patients per month with lifesaving healthcare. Note that these are areas that other organizations have been able to reach with consistent care, and our team at HAC has been able to set up a sustainable system to reach them every 1-2 months. I say with great humility that HAC’s work is changing healthcare in Uganda and has the potential to make the world a more equitable place.
Once you take out the places that are within 5km (3.1 miles) to the nearest health facility, there are large swaths of the country that are underserved. That’s where HAC needs to be!
To get closer to that goal, we want to reach over 100 villages with monthly or bimonthly healthcare by the end of 2020.
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, to everyone who has been with us on the ride for these five years:
- The communities we serve
- The health workers who treat patients
- The government officials who make things happen
- The HAC staff who bring things together
- The donors who give us the resources we need to do our work
- My wife (Nancy) and parents (Kirk and Katie) whose contributions I can’t even begin to list
- All the people who believe in what we do and have made this all possible
I am thankful for you all.
Gratefully,
Kevin
