Funding Will Support The Largest Refugee Population on the African Continent 

(Portland, OR) September 14, 2022 – Medical Teams International is grateful to the U.S. Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) for its award of $3.4 million USD to support Medical Teams’ ongoing work to provide comprehensive and timely medical care to refugees and host populations in Uganda.  

As of July 31, 2021, there were 1,582,076 refugees and asylum seekers in Uganda from South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Burundi, Somalia, Rwanda and other countries. This number is continually surging as unrest in the region intensifies. Due to the influx of refugees, the Uganda national health system is stretched to the limit, with understaffing of medical professionals and inadequate equipment and supplies at facilities. Communicable diseases like COVID-19 also threaten to spread throughout the community. 

The PRM funding will support primary healthcare activities, including procurement and logistics support to access medication, medical supplies, and equipment. It will also enable the hiring of additional key staff and support the construction and rehabilitation of health facilities and staff housing, bolstering Medical Teams’ programmatic activities throughout the region. 

Medical Teams currently reaches a population of more than 1,100,000 refugees and host Ugandans. This will be the second year of a three-year project. It covers Medical Teams’ entire operational area, numbering over 65 health facilities and more than 1,900 staff. 

“Medical Teams in Uganda is very grateful for our continuing partnership with PRM,” said Daryl Crowden, Medical Teams Country Director for Uganda. “Earlier this year I had the opportunity to travel with Assistant Secretary Julieta Valls Noyes and to visit people and communities, both refugee and Ugandan nationals, whose lives have been directly impacted by the funding provided by the people of the US and through PRM. In one village we met with young parents whose premature babies would not have been alive today without a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in their community. It is thanks to PRM that this NICU is close by. Medical Teams looks forward to writing more of these life transforming stories with PRM into the coming year.”   

Medical Teams began operation as a non-governmental organization in Northern Uganda in 2004 during the time of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency. During this time, Medical Teams provided for the basic health needs of displaced populations and returned communities in collaboration with local health staff, volunteer Community Health Workers, and expatriate medical volunteers. Medical Teams Uganda has since transformed programming to focus on providing life-saving primary health care to refugees and vulnerable host national populations in both sudden onset and protracted emergency contexts.  

As a fully registered non-governmental organization in Uganda, Medical Teams operates in the West Nile, Southwest, and Western regions of Uganda. Since 2009, institutional funding through partnerships with the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Uganda Office of the Prime Minister (OPM), U.S. State Department Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), EU Civil Protection and European Aid (ECHO) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has helped Medical Teams implement more than $35 million USD of primary health care programs, HIV and AIDS education and testing, child and maternal health, malaria prevention and treatment, and emergency response programs for refugee and displaced populations throughout Uganda.  The PRM funding is supplemental and complementary to Medical Teams’ existing partnership and funding through UNHCR and ECHO. The proposed activities complement the UNHCR scope.   

About Medical Teams International  

Founded in 1979, Medical Teams International provides life-saving medical care for people in crisis, such as survivors of natural disasters and refugees. We care for the whole person— physical, emotional, social and spiritual. Daring to love like Jesus, we serve all people—regardless of religion, nationality, sex or race. Learn more at medicalteams.org and on social media using @medicalteams. 

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