Back in May, Patrick Kahuma, an 18-year-old from Uganda, came to the Children’s Heart Center at North Carolina Children’s Hospital for a heart procedure which was a success. The following September, the same team of UNC’s pediatric cardiac doctors that brought Kahuma to Chapel Hill went to Uganda to work for UNC’s Project Uganda to practice care.

Lisa Chensvold, communications director for UNC’s Institute of Global Health and Infectious Diseases, says UNC Project-Uganda, began with UNC faculty physician Dr. Amal Mu-rar-ka who was killed in a car accident.

Before joining the faculty at UNC, Dr. Murarka spent a year in Kampala, Uganda, conducting HIV research and developed the first drug to successfully prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

UNC colleagues established the Amal Murarka International Pediatric Health Foundation. The foundation then sent a team to Kampala to establish the first pediatric intensive care unit in the country at Mulago Hospital at Makerere University in 2004.

By 2008, a partnership was formed between the Uganda team and UNC’s Institute for Global Health to formally establish the UNC Project-Uganda. Project-Uganda’s mission is to offer service and research opportunities for UNC faculty and students to assist Ugandan children.

Chensvold says Project Uganda has embraced social media technology like Twitter and Blogging to update the public and University on the success of surgeries and the team’s mission. The surgery of Patrick Kahuma had been updated via Twitter in real time, and Chensvold credits Dr. Keith Kocis, director of UNC’s Project Uganda, for continuing with the social media initiative.

To read Project Uganda’s blog, visit http://uncugandateam.blogspot.com/ and you can follow their updates on Twitter UNC Global Heath.