North Shore NewsBy: Rebecca Jaussi DNP, APRN, FNP-C, DipACLM
As a Nurse Practitioner at Kahuku Medical Center, I have valued the level of involvement and kuleana that KMC has taken in caring for our community and decided to follow their example by taking it to a global level with my family. Our involvement with the nonprofit organization, The Somero Project began nine years ago when we started to sponsor a few children at the Evergreen Primary School in Uganda. This sponsorship helped to provide an education for the student as well as their meal for the day. We were able to go as a family on a humanitarian trip in October 2019. On that trip, the school director Alex Oboi, a local Ugandan, asked me as a nurse, if I could help him open a medical clinic in the village of Kotolo, as they did not have access to healthcare in that region. I fell in love with the people in Kotolo and knew that we needed to do more to help.
After the trip, I had subsequently graduated from the University of Hawaii at Manoa as a Nurse Practitioner and had the desire to not only provide care at a local level but also in a global sense. My husband and I were able to work with Alex and start a medical clinic in the village.
Last month, my husband, daughter and I were able to finally make it over to see the clinic now that the travel restrictions have eased with the pandemic. We were able to see and treat over 260 patients as well as bring much needed medical supplies to provide for the clinic. The patients who came to this event, had to walk many miles with illnesses and waited for days to be seen.
This humanitarian trip was able to happen due to the generous donations from our community members near and far as well as from Kahuku Medical Center. I believe that it is a basic human right to have access to health care and am grateful to be involved with The Somero Project to provide for basic needs, such as education and health care.
If you would like to hear more about this organization,
please go to their website at thesomeroproject.org.