St John Uganda

Kampala, Uganda
In partnership with The Order of St. John

St John was established in Uganda in 1930 with a mission of preventing and relieving sickness and injury and to act to enhance the health of all people of all creeds.

Today, it has fifteen divisions and thousands of both uniformed and non-uniformed volunteer members throughout the country. Its operations have spread to the Central, Eastern, Midwestern and part of the Southern region of Uganda.

First Aid and Ambulance Services: This service is executed using a standby ambulance that operates 24hrs run by a well trained team of Emergency Medical Technicians responding to different incidents and emergencies in which people are either injured or ill. Most notable are the road traffic accidents which are common phenomena in Uganda today.

Public duties: They also offer their services during public gatherings organized by the Government. Many local communities count on St John Ambulance volunteers to take care of any emergency that may occur.

First aid Training: St John Ambulance offers Uganda’s most comprehensive state-of-the-art training programmes for businesses, individuals and communities. They train in various fields including:

First aid to different levels
Home - based care
Basic - and primary health care
Disaster preparedness and management

Behind this, is an enthusiastic and energetic team of fully trained instructors.

Home Based Care: There is great need for caregivers to offer this service to the needy especially those afflicted by the AIDS pandemic. St John Uganda has trained staff and volunteer members as instructors of home based care who in turn train community members as caregivers to minister these services to the needy of society.

They have targeted HIV and AIDS infected people care homes, bedside service providers, hospital nurses, elderly homes, babies’ homes, community care givers and individual members of society.

Disaster Preparedness/Prevention Programmes: Since disasters are not predictable and can be so destructive to health, St John Uganda conducts and organizes lectures which involve mock demonstrations on disaster preparedness and prevention so as to reduce the magnitude of occurrence and destruction in case disasters occur.

Basic and primary health care: This is done in both rural and urban areas through the support of our volunteer members. This service entails the following programmes; Immunization, Malaria control, HIV and AIDS, Hygiene, Drug abuse, Nutrition, Environmental conservation, Behavioural change campaigns among many others.

Road safety: St John sensitizes the public on proper road use and above all they conduct training to the road users on road safety tips and first aid on the road in case of accident emergency. Currently they are aiming to train all taxi drivers through their governing bodies.

The organization also works with the Ministry of Health; local government bodies and agencies; Ministry of Gender; Disaster Preparedness Ministry and other Organizations like the Uganda Red Cross and others to deliver services to Ugandans in case of an emergency.

Some of the future prospects include

Penetrate the Northern part of the country (the war affected region) where their services are most needed currently:
Diversify the primary health care project activities to mobilize voluntary public blood donations so as to cater for the needy in hospitals:
Open up Voluntary Counselling & Testing (VCT) centres all over the country where St John activities are prevalent:
Acquire more ambulances to respond to different emergencies that may occur and train an increased number of Emergency Medical Technicians:
Build more capacity in the organisation i.e. human resource capacity to run and manage the developed programmes:
Organize and mobilize more members to train in first aid and other fields and join St John Uganda “in the service of humanity”.

The Order of St John Worldwide

The Order of St John is a global organisation, working in 42 countries across Europe, North America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia-Pacific. St John is currently working in 13 countries across Africa and is providing a huge variety of services and support to communities, which reflects the great diversity of this continent.

To find out more about St. John's amazing work please click here

Registered UK Charity No. 235979