Crying babies sounds welcome us to Midigo health centre IV, one of the few health facilities in Yumbe District that offer maternity and ultrasound services to the public. In the next room, is nurse; Judith Adong carrying out an ultrasound scan on a heavily pregnant woman. About four more pregnant women await their turn just outside the door.

Judith is seated on a high stool, dressed in a milk-white nurse’s uniform, with a shoulder badge. She is one of the beneficiaries of a long-term course provided for by Enabel under its project; Support to the Development of Human Resources (SDHR).

We request a few minutes with her to gather her views in regard to the impact the training she has acquired has had on her work so far. And this is what she had to say. “I had been working in Midigo health centre iv, for four years, and in all those four years, there were ultrasound machines here but no one skilled enough to operate them,” Judith, smiling at the memory, intimates.

“I came to take the course in Ordinary Diagnostic Ultrasound after a committee from the health centre sat down and highlighted the need for a nurse who could handle the ultrasound scanners. Like many health centres, the machines had been at the hospital for more than 5 years but there was no one to operate them,”she further adds.

Midigo Health centre was identified as one of the centres in the district to benefit from the SHDR program and Judith was selected for a study in Mengo Hospital in Kampala in January 2017, for a six months training that ended in July 2017.

“From the training, I learnt a lot to do with screening small parts,” she laughs softly; explaining that the term ‘small parts’ refers to breasts and the scrotum because they cannot be bundled up with the abdomen, for they hang out alone and are scanned out as a single organ each.

“When I came back from the training, I was cleared to begin work. I started working in September, and I scanned around 50 patients just within that month of September. This was a much bigger number than before”adds Judith.

When asked what has been most beneficial since the training, Judith raises her eyebrows briefly and narrates how the education she acquired was a new remarkable thing to her so far.

“In school, we were taught about ultra-uterine fatal death; a dead child in the womb. It is one thing to learn theory it is another to see it in practice. The last scan I carried out and found a dead child in the patients’ womb was a really sad moment. But with my skills now, we encourage mothers to have regular ultrasounds to enable doctors to monitor their babies in the womb.”

"Enabel has been a very good supporter, they catered for my wellbeing. My transport, and everything was done on time,” Judith further explains. “I achieved skills in general abdominal, obstetrical and gynaecological ultrasound scanning. I was also introduced to ‘small parts’, doppler principles and basic ultrasound in tropical disease. This has helped me bridge the gap in Midigo health centre. There was no sonographer and now I am the only sonographer at the health centre,” she states with triumph.

Her Message to young women
“Medicine is a very good profession, you will learn a lot. You will learn something new in your life, it is a very interesting profession.”