A dream has come true in Uganda - Fondazione Corti

tional centre for epidemiology, monitoring and health
promotion. He was formerly Director of Research, Epidemiology
Laboratory and Biostatistics at the ISS and,
from 2004 to 2006, General Director of Healthcare
Protection with for the Italian Ministry of Health. He
is also a volunteer professor at Faculty of Medicine of
Gulu University.
The capacity building activities were the following:
A three-day training course in Applied Statistics in
Excel which was designed to teach the use of a tool that
can improve data quality control and analysis for health
data officers working in local institutions. Among the
23 participants, 19 were Lacor Hospital staff. The course
took place at Gulu District Administration Block and
was free of charge for participants.
Lacor Course in EXCEL, Lacor, Gulu, Uganda, May 2012
Pursuing quality
IDRC has sponsored a project at Lacor Hospital that
started on May 1st, 2010, and lasted until December
30th, 2011. The goal was to review and strengthen management
processes to determine impacts on the quality
of services provided by the Hospital. The main implemented
improvements were focused on empowering
middle management, introducing regular quality assurance
processes (including inspections and supervisions),
and reviewing the scheduling of shifts among nursing
and support staff, with special focus on wards requiring
qualified staff on a 24/7 basis (like the General Medicine,
Children’s Ward and Maternity Ward, etc.).
Improvements in quality of services were assessed through
external audits carried out at the start and at the end of
the project. The final results highlighted significant im-
A course on Epidemiology and statistical tools which
was aimed at increasing the skills needed for handling
individual clinical records and basic statistical analysis
oriented on clinical research. The course included basic
knowledge of epidemiological methods and design,
as well as of the newly-released CDC/WHO Epinfo 7
software.
Most of the 29 participants were Lacor Hospital medical
specialists, doctors, medical officers and nurses and
took place on the Lacor Hospital University Campus.
During the closing ceremony, each participant received
a certificate of attendance and the “Lacor Pen”, a handmade
tropical wood pen with gold-plated parts and
enameled Lacor Hospital logo created by Prof. Greco.
All students gave enthusiastic feedback.
provements especially in the quality of nursing care, with
a significant reduction in the Hospital-Acquired Infection
(HAI) rate, which decreased from 28% at the beginning
of the project, to around 14% at the end. External
audits of nursing practices also highlighted significant
improvements in the observed compliance with agreed
practices compared to the start of the project.
An analysis of the results of the HAI survey as well as of
the External Nursing Audit strongly suggests that these
improvements were promoted mainly by the introduction
of regular and standardized Quality Assurance
processes, as well as by reviewing and strengthening the
role of middle management. Better scheduling and a
new rostering model which allowed for better planning
of nursing staff shifts may also have contributed to the
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