Bulamu’s Vision and Partners

Bulamu’s vision is for the poor to have access to equitable, high-quality healthcare through better management systems and data. Our programs are designed to contribute possible solutions for the most common obstacles facing the poor in accessing healthcare not only in Uganda, but in many other countries.

Three key insights drive our work:

1. In many countries, clinical staff and facilities are already on the ground. While both can be further developed, often staffed health facilities already exist and need to be managed and supported better to improve the health outcomes of their work. Uganda’s Ministry of Health includes 3,200 health facilities in a country about the size of the U.S. state of Oregon.

Uganda’s health facilities are close to the poor, and generally well-trained staff are already at work in these facilities. This represents an opportunity to drive better care for the poor by ensuring that these staff work with an appropriate management system.

2. Most of Uganda’s health facilities have little to no management systems support.

Facilities and staff need Standard Operating Procedures for how they treat patients, so that they can provide consistently high quality care. Taking vital signs and organizing patient records by name, for example, have been common in the U.S. for more than 50 years but are often not widely implemented in low-income countries.

Providing clear and consistent management systems goes beyond what staff should do and includes the support that staff should expect from their health system. Patient treatment forms, essential medicines and supplies, and operating rooms should all be in stock or online, without downtime due to bottlenecks that must be identified and resolved.

For most bottlenecks facing patients in their search for quality healthcare, management systems are a key part of the opportunity to drive low-cost, high-impact health systems strengthening for the poor. While African health systems often have little to no management systems in place, their absence represents a tremendous opportunity to drive positive change in healthcare for the poor.

3. Data is missing, unused, out of date – or all three

Bulamu’s Health Center Excellence program addresses the need for more timely, relevant, and actionable data to support continuous improvement in health systems for the poor. We have designed a weekly dashboard that collects 57 Key Performance Indicators, on a wide range of systemic measures that MOH, District, and facility leaders have never had access to before. Data from these KPIs are graphed weekly and monthly through Tableau, returning timely graphic management reports on the health system to its leaders so they can take action as needed. Instead of sending data to the Ministry of Health, that in turn sends the data to the WHO, and never returning the data to local leaders in a form they can use, Bulamu’s management reports system represents a dramatic change in how systemic data can be used to improve health systems for the poor. (No individual patient data is recorded in our system.)

Our Partners:

The Ministry of Health of Uganda

The Association of Surgeons of Uganda is Bulamu’s lead partner for our surgery programs, along with the MOH and district governments where the programs take place.

Local District Governments of Uganda:

1. Amuru
2. Budaka
3. Bunyangabu
4. Gulu
5. Kakumiro
6. Kyegegwa
7. Mayuge
8. Namutumba
9. Isingiro
10. Sheema
11. Wakiso

Rotary International – Rotary Clubs in Uganda and the U.S. have partnered with Bulamu to provide funds and training for equipment to take patients’ vital signs to 125 health facilities. Once fully installed, these health facilities will treat approximately 1 million Ugandan patients per year, at a cost per patient of $0.10 per year, using this equipment to provide standard of care services to their patients.

EMERGENCY offers free, high-quality medical and surgical treatment to the victims of war, landmines and poverty.