Colin’s story: creating a mobile clinic to provide health services and deliver conservation messages

Photo: Kibale Health and Conservation
© Colin Chapman

This article is reposted courtesy of Panorama Solutions. Read the full solution here.

In 1989, Colin Chapman went to Kibale National Park in Uganda as a young conservation scientists and post-doc from Harvard and started a wonderful journey with the people and wildlife that lasts to this day.

He found the people extremely welcoming, warm, and very eager to engage in conservation. He wanted to help the people and protect nature, but their goals opposed one another. Colin searched for a win-win solution. The answer came as the result of a sad event and a happy one. People in the remote villages did not have vehicles, so Colin was the ambulance. One week, he drove a man with malaria to hospital, brought his body back for burial, and started to take a woman giving birth only to have the baby be born in the back seat.

This made Colin realize that with tropical health, most suffering is not caused by a lack of effective drugs or technology, it is due to the lack of accessibility to health knowledge and services.

In Uganda, 30% of all deaths among children are caused by malaria, a disease that can be easily treated or prevented. These trends are most severe in remote regions where health services are limited. Remote areas are also often home to parks. This juxtaposition provides a wonderful opportunity to form partnerships between conservation and health care.

With the help of local villagers and a Ugandan professor, they built a clinic and established a mobile clinic. The Mobile Clinic travels around the park, bringing basic health care, family planning, deworming, HIV treatment, vaccinations, health and conservation education and operates as an early warning system for emerging infectious diseases. We also let people air their grievances concerning the park and seek solutions with park authorities. This improves park-people relationships and decreases poaching.

Each year, we provide medical treatment to 16,000 people and outreach to about 200,000. It was through these efforts that Colin received one of Canada’s most prestigious humanitarian awards from the Velan Foundation.

POLICY, TERMS, CONDITIONS

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