A Campaign for Children
The Campaign
The Campaign for Children at Mengo Hospital is intended to honor the Rev. Dr. Mark S. Anschutz on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood. The project places particular emphasis on sustainability, improving critical infrastructure and expanding the hospital’s ability to care for infants and children.
MHP grew out of discussions that began last year among Mark’s friends and several current and former parishioners at Christ Church in Alexandria as to how we might honor his ordination anniversary. In our discussions with Mark around this project, he has implored the MHP Board to think "bodaciously!" We have embraced this term as reflecting his vision and desire for us to plan in faith to make a strong, large and lasting impact on the care of children in this far-away, impoverished country. We believe we can accomplish this with God's help; but we need your help as well.
We have been working closely with the Mengo Hospital leadership and pediatric specialists to understand the hospital's pediatric and larger infrastructure needs. While there are speciality hospitals in and around Entebbe, there is no one facility or “Children’s Hospital” that has the capacity to both diagnose and create a plan for treatment for a child. As a result, families get pushed from one clinic to the next without clear oversight from doctors and this process quickly becomes prohibitively expensive and hard to navigate.
While Mengo has an exceptional pediatric department, the facility is entirely insufficient. Our plan is to scale the good work of the pediatric program as we build a larger pediatric facility that will function as a “one stop shop” for diagnosis and patient care plans (knowing that children may well be treated at the specialty hospitals in other parts of the city if appropriate). This Pediatric Center of Excellence will be the only one of its kind in Uganda.
Our plan is to approach this project in three phases.
Phase one stared in January of 2022 when we sent a leadership team from Mengo Hospital to engage a benchmarking process study on the best practices of comparable pediatric facilities throughout the African continent. After completing these studies, we complied a simple vision document that helped us clarify what we needed in an architect/design firm.
After multiple interviews with designers from all over the globe, we decided to engage MASS Design Group. MASS is a nonprofit architectural firm that was founded in response to a charge Dr. Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners in Heath, gave to group of young Harvard Architecture students some 20+ years ago. MASS’s mission is to research, build, and advocate for architecture that promotes justice and human dignity. The founder of MASS Design, Michael Murphy, writes about Paul here. While MASS was founded in Boston, it is primarily headquartered out of Kigali, Rwanda, just a short flight from Kampala.
In August of 2022, MASS Architects will travel to Mengo Hospital and meet with hospital leadership. They will create an initial plan for how to fit this Pediatric Center of Excellence into the existing Mengo Hospital physical plant. As MASS develops this master plan, we are also in the midst of addressing pieces of the hospital’s infrastructure, systems that will need to be replaced and rebuilt in order for the Pediatric Center of Excellence to thrive. By early fall of 2022, we will have a master planning document from MASS as well as some simple drawings of what is possible for the Pediatric Center of Excellence.
Phase Two will involve further conversation between our team of specialists and advisors, the Mengo Hospital team and MASS team to develop a detailed plan for the Center. At the same time, we will begin construction on several infrastructure projects the Center will require (oxygen, waste disposal, power etc). In this process, we believe that we will remove several dilapidated structures that currently house doctors and nurses. In order to plan for the Center, we may need to break ground on replacement housing. Finally, during phase two, we will find and create “swing spaces” for the pediatric program to move during construction.
Phase Three will be the building of the first part of the Pediatric Center of Excellence. We hope to break ground on this first building in 2023. While we plan to develop a comprehensive plan for the full Center (Phase Two above), given the expense and need to move departments around while we build, we believe the Center will be built in multiple phases over the next 10 years. This staged build will also allow us to stage our training, staffing and other infrastructure needs.