To see our 23-24 Annual report please click HERE

To date the young people eat their meals outdoors. The food is cooked on a wood burning stove. The food is then collected and then taken to the verandah or eaten in the yard. Inclement weather can make eating outdoors unpleasant, as can be seen by the young person shielding his food below from the dust kicked up by the wind. We would like to build an indoor dining room and a new kitchen. It will cost approximately £16,000. Any help that you can give to help us do so would be of great benefit to the young people – many thanks.

Dr Towey has volunteered at St Mary’s Hospital Lacor, Gulu, Uganda since 2002 (part time since 2008). He had previously been in Tanzania for 8 years.

St Mary’s is a not for profit, church supported, general hospital of 476 beds in northern Uganda. For many years it has had a small four-bed Intensive Care Unit near the operating theatre, which was upgraded to an eight-bed unit in 2005. It is a teaching hospital for anaesthetists, medical students, nurses and laboratory technicians and it is attached to Gulu University Medical School. The majority of the patients are the rural poor and can come from remote areas up to 100 miles away from Gulu.

Since 2002 Dr Towey has been involved in the training of anaesthetic officers, nurses, and medical students. He is now a part time volunteer and is focusing on the development of the intensive care ward. As the reputation of the Intensive Care Unit in St.Mary’s Hospital Lacor has spread in Uganda Dr.Towey advises other hospitals in the area of how best to develop their own units to build capacity and improve surgical care for the most vulnerable patients.

How African Mission can support St Mary’s Hospital and surrounding hospitals in northern Uganda in 2024

Dr Towey writes:

Thank God the Covid pandemic is over. The work in the ICU continues with as always its high demands and as I write in January 2024 the routine work of the ICU remains the postoperative stabilisation of surgical patients, the care of snakebite patients, and the management of head injured patients. I anticipate that we will need funds to upgrade at least one very good ICU nurse who has shown a particular skill. Very often the critically ill patients do not respond well to our first line antibiotic drugs and the second line more effective antibiotics can be  too expensive to our very poor patients. With donations we can offer a course of second line antibiotics which may be lifesaving. In 2024 we will continue to support the ICU with good quality tracheostomy tubes with inner cannula to facilitate safe nursing care. Education as always is an ongoing need and we plan to print or buy several books to maintain the ICU and the Anaesthetic School as places for good ongoing education for all the staff and students.

The cost of the transportation of central intravenous neck lines will also be an important item which must continue. One of the outcomes of the Covid pandemic is that many hospitals in northern Uganda have realised the vital importance of oxygen therapy and high dependency wards and intensive care wards. The reputation of St.Mary’s Hospital Lacor has spread nationally and we hope to be able to give advice and on some occasions practical support to acquire essential equipment for these remote hospitals. We thank all our donors that enable the staff to be effective health care professionals and show that hospitals in this post conflict remote region of sub-Saharan Africa are a sign of compassion and hope.

The following video shows six of the young people staying at Fatima Mission playing an instrument called a Marimba. Three things to note: (1) most of these young people are blind,  (2) this video was filmed after the young people had been given ONE DAY’S instruction on how to play this instrument and (3) the building in which they are playing was paid for by African Mission donors.

To see the video please click HERE

Dr Towey was interviewed about his work in Africa by Dr.Mike Dobson for his podcast series ‘Anaesthesia Compass’.

The resultant three podcasts can be found on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts:

• Podcast one – ‘Intensive Care in rural Africa’ (1 of 2)
• Podcast two – ‘Intensive Care in rural Africa’ (2 of 2)
• Podcast three – ‘Tetanus’

International research that Dr Towey has contributed to:

Essential Emergency and Critical Care – a consensus among global clinical experts (March 2021)

Globally, critical illness results in millions of deaths every year. Although many of these deaths are potentially preventable, the basic, life-saving care of critically ill patients can be overlooked in health systems. Essential and Emergency Care (EECC) has been devised as the care that should be provided to all critically ill patients in all hospitals in the world. This study aimed to specify the content of EECC and additionally, given the surge of critical illness in the ongoing pandemic, the essential diagnosis-specific care for critically ill patients with COVID-19.

Read the full findings of the study (pdf)

Intensive care management of snake bites (July 2020)

Read the abstract

Intensive care medicine in rural sub-Saharan Africa (Jan 2017)

Read the abstract

Dear African Mission supporter,

first of all I would like to thank you for all of the the support you have given to our work to date. 

We are all living with the impact of Covid 19 and the huge upheaval it is causing to our lives. As I write the death rate caused by the virus stands at 18,500 (ONS figures in the week up to the 10th April) here in the UK. The pandemic has yet to fully impact on Africa but when it does the numbers of death are expected to be very high. We have a short window of opportunity where we can provide some vital equipment to St Mary’s Hospital in Uganda that will help in the fight against this deadly disease.

Please click HERE to see an appeal from Dr Ray Towey, who has worked in St Mary’s Hospital since 2002. Any help that you can give at this time would be very much appreciated and could well be literally life saving.

The quickest way to give is online at https://cafdonate.cafonline.org/12578#!/DonationDetails or youcan also send a cheque made payable to ‘African Mission’ to our usual address (African Mission, 12 Melior Street, London SE1 3QP).

Thank you for considering this request.

Paddy Boyle,

African Mission Administrator