The Gretta Foundation

Daughter of peasant farmers from Mbale, Uganda.

I hope you are fine over there. I have just finished my last exam for this semester…It has been a long semester with a lot of work, however, I have successfully completed my results for the whole academic year.
This scholarship has helped to achieve my career of being a nurse. I am now seeing this bright feature ahead of me. During the semester, we had two months in class and two months practicing what we learnt in class on the ward. For what I learnt and practiced this semester, I feel I am a professional.
In Mulago Hospital, I was able to:

· work on the special care unit where I learnt how to take care of newborn babies who have conditions asphyxia, respiratory distress syndrome.

· take care of patients who have undergone surgery and those who are to go for surgery, also to deal with an emergency condition on the surgical ward. Patients on this ward have conditions like; intestinal obstruction, fractures, large wound with gangrene, even some cancer patients after surgery. This reminded me of the nurse who inspired me to be a nurse in my childhood. she actually died of breast cancer.

· take care of patients with infectious diseases, basing on the principles of infection control, including barrier nursing. These patients include tuberculosis patients, tetanus patients, HIV patients with opportunistic infections due to very low immunity.

· take care of malnourished children.

· carry out the regular immunization against the six killer diseases for the children below 5 year. I also I did vaccine management.

· carry out all the family planning methods in Uganda. These included inserting Norplant, intrauterine devices, oral contraceptives, injectable s, giving out condoms, and lastly giving health talks and counseling clients on matters of reproduction.

· I was also able to carry out cervical cancer screening on this ward.

I am proud to be a nurse, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank you " MEG" and all those who are generously contributing all that they offer to support this programme. You are really improving health care in our country. You cannot imagine that at the moment, you find only 3 nurses on a ward of about 90 patients in our main referral hospital. I tell you the situation is so demanding here. We the students whom you are supporting now are ready to work and improve the image quality and quantity of nursing care in Uganda.

I will be leaving for holidays next week, i intend to work with some organisation in our home district where they particularly deal with HIV and Tuberculosis patients. This is to improve on my nursing career and to also keep me busy during the long holiday as I give back to my society what I have learnt. I will be up dating you of what will be happening to me.

With lots of love.