Health Care Ministry

We glorify God for bringing us this far as we take stock of the many achievements in the Health Care Ministry spear headed by our Foundress Mother Mary Kevin Kearney. Among the many services and great works accomplished by Mother Kevin, a lot has been done in the medical field right from the very beginning. We not with great appreciation that as she championed for education especially for the girl child, she always remembered medical needs for the community with special focus on the mothers. She ensured that the mothers received proper medical care right from the beginning in order to reduce child mortality rate.

The following are the medical facilities initiated by Mother Kevin in East Africa and are now run by Little Sisters of St. Francis:

  1. Nsambya Hospital had a very humble beginning under a Mango tree in 1903. It has now grown into one of the biggest healthy facility in Uganda and in East Africa. This was followed by a nursing midwifery school within the same premises in 1921 and enrolled nursing established 10 years later in 1931. She had to seek for a special permission from Rome to start this training school in order to reduce on the child mortality rate which had gone so high due to ignorance and traditional child birth.
  2. St. Francis Hospital Nagalama came into existence in 1906
  3. In 1914, Mother Kevin’s medical services in replaced a grass thatched dispensary with a small Hospital in Kamuli (Busoga) which produced a Nursing and midwifery school.
  4. In 1931, she established St. Francis Hospital Nkokonjeru.
  5. She started a domestic school through which food and nutrition developed into a fauculty for the University curriculum in 1931.
  6. In January, 1932 she begun the leprosy work in Nyenga which later became a general hospital in 1992 known as St. Francis Hospital Nyenga
  7. Followed by a dispensary at Nagongera in Tororo District.
  8. In February, 1934, she begun another Leprosarium under a mvule tree at Buluba giving rise to St. Francis Hospital Buluba.
  9. In May, the same year (1934), she moved to Lwala and opened another Hospital in Eastern Uganda followed by a dispensary in Palisa District in 1936.
  10. In 1938 she responded to the needs of the physically challenged children in Budini by putting up a centre for them as well as providing medical education.
  11. She proceeded to Kenya and put up a dispensary at Mangu
  12. In 1943 she came back to Uganda and put up  a hospital at Dabani. This same year she established medical services in South Africa at Kokstad Diocese amidst resistance from apartheid political system .
  13. In 1954 she established yet another Hospital in Nyabondo  near Kisumu in Kenya.