Uganda
In February 2024, Atlas Global Health worked closely with Dr. Jessica Schmidt and her team from the University of Wisconsin, Department of Emergency Medicine, to support a point-of-care ultrasound course for physicians in two places: Mbale Regional Referral Hospital, where the team is led by Dr. Peter Olupot Olupot and Dr. William Okiror, and the Makerere University emergency medicine residency at Mulago National Referral Hospital in Kampala, led by Dr. Joseph Kalanzi. The course paired hands-on teaching with donated devices and a train-the-trainer approach, so the physicians who learned could teach the next group themselves.
What happened next is the reason this page matters. The work at Makerere grew into a joint project with Dr. Kalanzi and Dr. Mary Ellen Lyon and Rotary International, to spread the same ultrasound education to all of Uganda's regional referral centers. The same local leaders who were trained are now carrying the teaching outward, hospital by hospital, with an international partner behind them. That is what scaling looks like when it is done by the people who live there.
Atlas's part in Uganda was to help start something and then support the people who took it further. A course is a visit. A course that becomes a national effort, led by Dr. Kalanzi and his colleagues and backed by Rotary International, is a system. The credit for that belongs in Uganda.
Affiliated Hospitals
- Mulago National Referral Hospital
- Mbale Regional Referral Hospital
