Here is an update of our Feb. 27 program that was written by Dick Hecock of the Detroit Lakes Breakfast Rotary Club. 
 
 
Catherine Kigwana Strum was the featured speaker at the DL Noon Rotary meeting this afternoon. The program chair was the club’s Ed Gehrke who has maintained with Ms. Strum a  twenty-five year friendship which began in the Jinja area, near the headwaters of the Nile River in Uganda. Ed set the stage with a series of pictures of the village of Kimanto, its resources and people. He described the problems facing the community, with a special focus on the lack of adequate health care facilities.   Mortality rates are high, life expectancies low,  disabling diseases are commonplace. Health care costs, particularly the economic and social costs associated with transport to  clinics and hospitals in nearby cities,  are prohibitive for most of Kimanto’s  approximately 10,000 residents. 
   
Kimanto native Catherine Kigwana Strum picked up the story from there,  describing an opportunity to establish a local clinic which could overcome many of the shortcomings of the current health care delivery system. A clinic building has been constructed, and additional funds and other resources for equipping and supplying the facility are being sought.   

Catherine and Ed have been in contact with a local Rotary Club in Jinja city which is interested in partnering with other Rotarians in seeking Rotary International Funds for establishing a Kimanto medical clinic. To help facilitate the project,  the  Jinja club includes members with medical, engineering, and other skills that would be directly applicable to the effort. Also, Katherine has a close relationship with a member of the Ugandan government who is expected to ensure that government barriers to such a project would be minimized.    

Working with Catherine, Jinja Rotarians, District 5580 personnel, and in consultation with Rotary Foundation staff, Ed is trying to put together a proposal which would lead to raising about $35,000 towards the project.