When I visited Gulu regional referral hospital recently, it was with a lot of bias. This because when I visited in 2006, I was welcomed by garbage piling at the incinerator, trenches flooded with dirty brown smelly waste running from the hospital wards and patients sleeping on the veranda while expectant mothers paced the corridors of the maternity ward. This time, the compound was clean and green save for a little litter here and there.
There were people cooking and washing outside some wards. When we entered the labour suite, Filicia Anicia, who worked here as a midwife before joining a private company, said the ward had changed from the bloody environment she worked in a few years back. The hospital now has labour beds, midwives and doctors. The floor is spotlessly clean and there is a cleaner on standby near the door. When I ask Margaret Atenyo, a midwife at Gulu hospital, if they have enough supplies for the ward, she says yes.
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