| This project was completed and handed over to the government and communities of Soroti District, Uganda, in December 2009.
“This is a very exemplary borehole. You can admire how the community has owned the project. They really feel that it is theirs,” says government health inspector Moses Amolo, indicating one of the boreholes AMREF recently handed over to the people of Soroti District, northeastern Uganda.
“It is a big improvement. You cannot believe how it was before. Everything, all of the health centres were badly destroyed by rebel attacks. There was no clean water, people were sleeping in the open,” says Robert Emwoku, the headteacher at Ojuba Community Primary School and a member of Ojuba Village’s water and sanitation committee.
He smiles proudly: “[My] pupils are benefitting especially. They are the ones who are maintaining the sanitation of the borehole.”
Ojuba is one of the many rural communities that dot the forested plains of Soroti. Badly affected by drought and by a war that displaced thousands of its residents, the region has only just begun to recover.
AMREF was among the first non-governmental organisations to lend a hand to the long-term rebuilding process, and in 2009 we completed our first? major project in the region, the four-year Soroti Integrated Care Programme.
“Because the need in Soroti was so great, we knew we must address the health problems from the ground up,” says programme manager Nico [Lastname]. “There were very few government services, and the communities were very fragile.”
The programme, which has been fully adopted by the people and government of Soroti district, is an example of AMREF’s unique, collaboration-rich approach to health. Bringing together the district government, community leaders, and the people of Soroti, we have repaired health facilities, sunk boreholes (making sure to teach communities how to maintain them), provided basic health education, and improved service delivery by training village health teams (VHTs) how to diagnose and treat simple diseases and refer more serious cases to the newly refurbished clinics.
“AMREF and the village health teams have helped us to run the health centres more smoothly and serve more patients,” says nurse Daphine Akello. Attached to Bugondo Health Centre near Soroti Town, the district capital, many of the patients she sees are referrals from the VHTs. She continues:
“Thanks to the VHTs, the nurses and clinical officers can spend more time with individual patients. We also have more time to manage our supplies, so there are fewer stock-outs.”
Since the project started, AMREF has sunk xx boreholes, distributed 12,000 insecticide-treated bednets, trained 126 water and sanitation committee members, and refurbished xx health centers. We have also established 44 community development committees to help plan and manage the overall development of the region.
“You can see the difference everywhere,” says headteacher Robert Emwoku. “People are healthier, more secure. We feel like we have control of our own future now.”
“Our goal when we started this ambitious project was to see it taken over by the district health authority and the communities. We can now say that our interventions are sustainable, they work, and we have done our job,” says [Nico’s Lastname].
“The next step is to apply the lessons here to other parts of Uganda.”
Our work in the Soroti district of Uganda is supported by the European Union. | 
Residents of Katine share a laugh. Photo: Dan Chung/The Guardian
Achievement 1: Train 100 health workersAchievement 2: Reduce malaria prevalenceAchievement 3: Improve borehole coverageAchievement 4: Immunize 100% of kids
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