13 January 2020

These 2 weeks have gone quite fast. I’ve come to my last full day of work in Kampala and I packed it full of excellent meetings. This morning Winnie and I had the opportunity to present the research we worked on last summer to the Neurosurgery Department at Mulago National Referral Hospital. The title of the project was:  Phenytoin Dosing Practices in the Absence of the Availability of Therapeutic Drug Monitoring. It was a retrospective medical chart audit to characterize the current prescribing practices for this anti-seizure drug being use to prevent seizures in patients with traumatic brain injury. The work was well received and we were able to learn a little more background about how the drug doses were chosen which will be helpful when writing up the paper.

We then went to meet with the Dean of the School of Health Sciences, Dr. Freddy Kitutu. He has been in this position only a few months and we had a great discussion about the upcoming pharmaceutical care research project and the status of our current collaborative efforts relating to research, training/education, and community service. I’m not sure when I first met Dr. Kitutu, but it was either 2012 or 2013 on my first or 2nd Global Health-Uganda APPE (advanced pharmacy practice experience) trip with students from Wilkes University. He had finished with his Master of Clinical Pharmacy training and was one of the clinical faculty and now, just recently he achieved his PhD!

Then, while on the medical campus of Makerere University, we went to see Dr. Charles Ibingira, the Principal of the College of Health Sciences who I met back in 2014. He is the husband of my friend, Lydia, with whom I had Sunday brunch with last week. Dr. Ibingira is also the President of the International World Health Summit, and he is the host of the Regional World Health Summit in April, here in Kampala. I was also able to meet with Dr. Charles Batte, who is head of the organizing committee. They had just put up a beautiful banner announcing the conference so we were able to get a photo in front of it.

Then we trekked over to the main Makerere University Campus to the Pharmacy School to meet with the Head of the Department, Pakoyo Kamba and to also meet with Professor Odoi for the last time this trip. I was also able to briefly talk with Pamela Blessed who is a pharmaceutics faculty. She also spent 6 months in the US working with an old colleague of mine, Prof Art Kibbe, working on her PhD project of isolating a pharmaceutical excipient from banana. We forgot to take a photo today but I’ll add one from her time in the USA.

I ended the day having dinner with Vicky, who one one of the pharmacists who came to the USA for the short-term Pharmaceutical Care Training Program back in 2013. It was great to catch up with all she is doing. Currently she is the Pediatrics Pharmacist at Mulago Hospital. We also talked about our new puppies. This was a little unusual because most Ugandan’s do not have any use for animals as “pets”. They use dogs as  guard dogs and cats to eat the rats and other rodents. But Vicky has had both cats and dogs as pets and recently acquired a new puppy who is so cute!

I can’t believe my time here has come to an end. I will head back to the states tomorrow.