In previous posts I have mentioned Sister Ernestine Akulu, founder of the Asili Hospital in rural Uganda. She is an impressive and inspiring woman and I wanted to share some of the journey she took on her way to becoming an invaluable asset to her community.

Sister Ernestine was originally supposed to attend medical school in the United States, but because of the brutal reign of Idi Amin she was unable to get a visa to leave the country, so she had to look for alternatives within Africa. She stayed and studied to become a nurse. Her studies were again interrupted in the late 1970’s because of the continuing war in her country. After she became a nurse, she was assigned to spend two years opening a medical center far from her community, followed by another four years as the head of the medical ward and a member of the hospital board in Northern Uganda.

Her dedication and progress was noticed by the Church, and she was invited to go to Italy to study physical therapy. In Uganda, malaria can easily ravage the body. When a child is left untreated, she can develop “cerebral malaria” which will have a life-long impact on her ability to walk and function independently. This is the reason why Sister Ernestine had to become a physical therapist – to treat children who couldn’t walk due to malaria. When she returned to Uganda in 1992 she was greeted with the overwhelming task of aiding the members of her community who were just coming back from the war, with no established facility in which to do it. Her congregation was working with nothing. They only had a piece of land and small funding to construct a facility.

Each day Sister Ernestine would treat the people who showed up at the site while one of her Sisters brought a truck full of building supplies and oversaw the construction of the medical “dispensary.” This facility was far from a medical center you and I would be familiar with. When the structure was finally completed in 1996 the community urged them to treat more people with more medical needs than they were prepared for. They were found themselves providing aide to disabled children, people suffering from malaria and women who needed C-sections and post natal care. The facility had to keep growing, but it happened at a slower pace than the demand.

As Sister Ernestine would say, “Out of nothing, something very, very great came.”

Even with all of that progress, she still saw many people die because they did not have anti-retroviral treatments and other procedures available to help the patients.

In my next blog I will share with you some of the wonderful developments that have been made to create a full-service hospital headed by Sister Ernestine, the Angel in Uganda.

In the meantime, the Asili Hospital is still in need of access to advanced equipment and resources. You can contribute to Sister Ernestine’s efforts here: https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=26195&Itemid=108