Due to late registration, I could not apply for any medical course at any university in the country. This had been my long-cherished dream: joining the university and becoming a medical professional. I was left in shuttles and open to any course that my combination of biology, chemistry, mathematics,  and information technology (BCM/IT) would offer. My name is Norah Akaba, and this is my career story.

As she walked past the women’s ward, Laker saw a teenage patient with severe burns on much of her upper body. The girl, laying alone on the bare floor, was jerking and breathing heavily with sticky saliva flowing profusely out of her mouth.  She appeared malnourished with a protruding belly.

The life of Joyce Nakayenga, a new recipient of a PhD in engineering, is aligned with the writer’s assertion. Named after her paternal grandmother, Nakayenga grew up knowing that she had to uphold that matriarch’s legacy of hard work and overcoming challenges. Nakayenga’s grandmother struggled to educate her children despite having so little. 

Among the equipment received in May were still and video cameras, laptops, projectors, and other assorted accessories. Because of the partnership, there has been a positive change at the school, most especially in terms of equipment. During the first phase of the $1.3milliom NORHED project that was signed in 2013 as a collaboration between the Norwegian NLA University and the Department of Mass Communication at the time, the latter acquired equipment, such as 10 Handycam video cameras, more than 15 DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) cameras, with their accessories like tripods and a comprehensive journalism and communication book bank.   

Within one week of giving birth by C-section, a young mother needing to heal herself and nurse her newborn was called back to work. She had no choice but to report to her job as a part-time employee at a top university in Uganda  because her livelihood depended on it. 

While strides have been made in reduction of infant mortality,  prevalence of obstetric fistulas due to inadequate health care continues to be problematic, especially for developing countries and with the diminished number of health care workers since the Covid-19 pandemic. Obstetric fistula, in which there is a hole between the birth canal and bladder or rectum, is an ongoing problem in Uganda because of gaps in timely, high-quality medical care.