It doesn't have to be this way

I’m taking you to a place that reeks of suffering and pain.
The fetid airless rooms swelter as the sun hammers down on the walls and roof.
Rooms jammed with beds and people, sometimes on the floor.
Senses suffer with the overwhelming oppressive atmosphere.
People queuing on seats, on the floor, in doorways.
Families outside in the shade, washing clothes, cooking food.
The smell of decomposing wounds causes me to stifle a flinch.
My whole body feels the weight of decay and desperation.
It feels like my worst idea of a field hospital in a war zone.
It’s the district referral hospital in Soroti.
The only option for people who can’t afford to travel.
The only option for people who can afford hospital treatment.

A place where babies and children with fractured limbs lie in traction for weeks.

Where a child with osteomyelitis is stabilised so he can go home, the likely source of his infection. He’ll return when the one orthopaedic surgeon has space to operate.

A man’s diabetic gangrenous foot decays – how can he afford treatment or surgery?

Children with malaria, HIV, anaemia, malnutrition, cram together, sharing beds

A homeless man on a trolley, parked in a corridor, slowly dies as his leg rots. He has a compound fractured femur. He has no money and no family, so no food, no painkillers, no possibility of conservative or surgical treatment. 

I can’t sanitise the awful truth.

I can’t pretend this isn’t happening.

The hospital only has paracetamol, septrin (used to treat infections), and antihistamines readily available.

Doctors write prescriptions for other drugs, relatives go to town to buy the medication.

You have to pay for every test, doctor, operation, aftercare, medicine, night in hospital.

Many can’t afford it. 

And they die.

This is the reality of secondary healthcare for people in this County.

There is no primary healthcare.

This is the reality of healthcare in many poor areas across the world.

I want to run away.

I want to help.

I want to capture the horror, take it away on my sd card.

I can’t bear to photograph people’s suffering, exhaustion, fear.

But there is a glimmer of hope - people with courage and vision.

A physiotherapist working with GC to try and find a way to provide physio for children at the Ark, and advice and training for staff and guardians.

Doctors and nurses struggling with minimal testing and investigative facilities, developing ingenious contraptions for children to share oxygen as they don’t have enough concentrators. 

Families coping with the challenges of looking after children with disabilities.

Single parents and elderly grandparents coping with the added burdens of preventative health measures - good hygiene, nutrition, bathing, extra laundry, check-ups.  But without easy access to water, no transport, no mobility aids for the child, no source of income.

Staff at the Ark who provides guardians with opportunity to work, and disabled children with a safe, secure, loving, healthy environment, and nutritious food.

An uncle who carries his disabled niece twice a day along narrow paths to meet the Ark bus – a path too narrow for transport. She doesn’t have a wheelchair.

The awesome Atiira disability action group who work incredibly hard to create income generation schemes for their members – all of whom are disabled or care for disabled children. 

Staff at GC who rescued a sick child and took her hundreds of miles for specialist surgery (funded by GC).

I took some photos. I won’t run away. I’ll try and do something.