June 10, 2014

A reception was held on May 14 in the Rush Building’s Alumni Garden and Lobby for delegates visiting Drexel University from Uganda. While enjoying refreshments, the delegates- primarily from Makerere University- talked about different healthcare issues facing both the United States and Uganda.

The Ugandan delegates were visiting as part of a Rotary funded interdisciplinary collaboration between Drexel’s Colleges of Nursing and Health Professions, Medicine, Computing and Informatics, and School of Public Health and partners in Uganda including Makerere University. This collaboration, currently in its first year, is part of a three-year grant from Rotary, an organization that works with universities globally to encourage collaboration and to help build better communities.

A team of Drexel researchers recently visited Uganda for a project on maternal and child health.

Mike Kagawa, MD, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Makerere University, thinks one of the benefits of collaborations like this is that both universities are able to share information on the way they handle certain issues. Kagawa said that his main focus was trying to look for ways that Drexel can help him and his colleagues train students and workers out in the community and in their workplaces. Right now one of his biggest challenges is that healthcare workers are required to be at their workplace. If they have to be absent for a training, then the quality and access to healthcare drops. On his first impression, Kagawa noted that Drexel was “Awesome.”