Clinic is released from grip of decay
COMIC RELIEF: OPERATION HEALTH BBC1, 9pm
“THIS place,” says Lenny Henry, “was a wreck. The ceilings were falling down – there were bats flying out, there were insects, there were hornets stinging the patients while they waited.”
The Iyolwa Clinic, in rural Uganda, used to be seen by its staff as the worst in Africa, but that was before the local community, working with a team of celebs under the Comic Relief umbrella, transformed it into a fully-functioning healthcare facility.
Henry did a live update the other night for BBC1 viewers, and tonight’s hour-long programme narrates the full story.
Naturalist and TV presenter Steve Backshall went out quite early in the project “because the clinic was absolutely rife with stinging wasps, and rodents. It was entirely possible that people could turn up at the clinic and get more sick, rather than getting better. My job was to get rid of all the pests, paving the way for everyone else to get busy.”
Comedian John Bishop also got involved, lending a hand with the plastering. “This place is completely amazing,” he says. “Practically everyone I worked with on the site has been affected by malaria or another clinical need that requires the community to have a fullyfunctioning healthcare facility. What is remarkable is that people on the site are building a clinic for their own families, not many people get a chance to do that. This will service a massive community and that’s a great feeling.”
During his time in Eastern Uganda, Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond rode on a boda boda motorbike, often used to take pregnant women and sick people, in desperate need of medical attention to Iyolwa clinic.
“I owe my life, no doubt about it, to being transported quickly to hospital after a life-threatening accident,” Hammond says. “On that occasion it was by air ambulance. For the people of Iyolwa, it’s riding side-saddle on a tiny boda boda motorbike, for many miles. It is the cheapest, quickest way to get to a health facility. Doing this whilst heavily pregnant, injured or unwell might not be everyone’s first choice, however in Iyolwa it’s the best option – the only option.”