Dr. Emmanuel’s HIV/AIDS Department is large. Lacor Hospital was one of the very first Government sentinel sites for AIDS epidemiological surveillance, which is based on testing pregnant women (who are considered to be representative of the healthy local population) who present for the first time at the hospital’s Ante Natal Clinics. Lacor started testing for HIV in 1993: in that year, 29% of pregnant women tested HIV-positive. Thanks to the country’s strong action with AIDS awareness since the late eighties, HIV is down to 9% in pregnant women. The hospital cares for 14.926 HIV/AIDS patients, of which 6.217 are on Anti-Retroviral Treatment with specific drugs; most of these patients are provided free services under the AIDS Care and Treatment (ACT) programme funded by the (US) President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
In addition to heading the HIV/AIDS Department, Dr. Emmanuel directs Lacor’s quality improvement committee, which includes, amongst others, a quality improvement clinician, a nurse, the medical director, the matron, the pharmacist, the internal auditor and a member from the Technical Department. The team’s objective is to institutionalize quality improvement principles in the hospital through regular quality assessments that include joint internal support supervision, systematic clinical chart audits and patient satisfaction surveys. The committee verifies the activities of two other hospital committees: the Medicine & Therapeutic Committee and the Infection Control Committee.
Dr. Emmanuel is also the project leader for Project MoCHeLaSS, which focuses on empowering communities to identify high-risk cases and to enhance referrals in northern Uganda and South Sudan. A five-year, IDRC-funded project that began on November 7, 2015, the project relies on the collaboration of Lacor Hospital and Torit Hospital in South Sudan, as well as the University of Montreal. This work was carried out with a grant from the Innovating for Maternal and Child Health in Africa initiative, co-funded by Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and Canada’s International Development Research Centre.
