Story

This week, 22nd - 29th June 2026, is BIG GIVE week. Any funds given to selected charities this week will be doubled. I am asking you if you would consider giving your support to REACH Bwindi, a charity particularly close to my heart.

As many of you already know, my family and I had one of the richest years of our family life n 2018-19, living and working in remote rural Uganda, at Bwindi Community Hospital. I worked both as a medical doctor and as a clinician supporting quality improvement at the hospital, and all of us were drawn into the community life of the place. Bwindi is recognised locally and regionally to provide services of an outstanding quality, to undertake research, and to think critically about the services it provides. The staff are inspirational. Alongside the usual services expected in a rural hospital (medicine, surgery, paediatrics, obstetrics, gynaecology) Bwindi Community Hospital (BCH) also offers mental health services including talking therapies, chronic disease management, extensive community outreach services and services particularly accessible to young people (Youth Friendly Services.)

In recent years, the hospital has experienced a series of financial shocks. First there was Covid, which put pressure on services and reduced tourist visits to the area (and tourist donationns), then came Trump’s retraction of all US funding overseas funding programmes (including the HIV programme), as well as a reduction in funds available from the government of Uganda. Then came the current ecomonic downturn which affects the prices the hosptial has to pay for fuel and resources, and now, finally, there is the risk of Ebola.

Since returning to the UK, I have become a Trustee of the charity, REACH Bwindi, that provies support to the hospital through fundraising, for those community focussed services in particular. The support the charity can provide is now more important than ever, to enable the community services to continue.

REACH Bwindi has been selected as a charity whose funds raised this week will be doubled in this week of the BIG GIVE. Please consider making a donation through this Just Giving page.

Below is a little more information about our work.

So why this place in particular?

Bwindi is in the far south western corner of Uganda, almost on the border with DR Congo. Its catchment is an extremely remote hilly area populated by subsistence farmers and forest dwelling people who were displaced by the development of an enormous national forest park. In this area, a typical household has 7 children and subsistes on less than 1 dollar a day.

The community hospital is an outstanding institution, now 20 years old. It has an outstanding reputation internationally for its innovation in care, and nationally for the quality of care and the calibre and commitment of its staff. Its impact has been profound in reducing rates of infectious disease amongst children, reducing maternal and perinatal mortality and managing chronic disease. It has a unique health insurance system which allows patients who contribute to seek care and medication at a heavily subsidised cost, promoting the take-up of chronic disease management and preventive care. Mental health interventions are extensive within the community and digital communications are used to follow up those in the remotest areas.

Why does it need funds?

Providing health care to such a poor community will never be profit-making. The hospital receives some funding from the Church of Uganda (protestant), a little from central government and otherwise relies on donors and grant funding. The hospital’s pervasive financial pressures have become more and more acute in recent times. US funding has all but vanished under Trump’s regime, not only to the hospital’s USAID funding programmes, but also to national programmes in Uganda generally (such as central drug stores) that in turn furnish the hospital. Meanwhile, Uganda’s government has further limited its funding to a third of its previous, and grants and donations are ever harder to come by.

And what about the charity?

Along with a few other UK medics who have also worked there, we have established a charity called REACH Bwindi. We are particularly focused on supporting the hospital’s community team which provides primary care outreach, youth-friendly services, mental health services and health promotion activities in the largely remote forested area that surrounds the hospital. In the last year alone we were able to transfer £20 000 to the hospital. We are finding it more and more difficult to raise funds in the current political and financial climate. To be clear, the hospital is funded in part by the Church of Uganda as is the way for many health facilities in Uganda, but we are not a Christian charity.