SURGEON LEADS TEAM OF YOUNG PEOPLE
ON UGANDA MERCY MISSION
A top Wirral surgeon has been swapping his scrubs for
cowboy boots and a second career as a cattle rancher in East
Africa.
Stephen Blair, a varicose vein specialist at the Spire Murrayfield
Hospital, at Barnston, is just back from Uganda and a tenth
anniversary tour of duty with young people from his local
church group in Heswall. He, his daughter Cathy, and his
wife Christine, have spent three weeks in Uganda providing
education and health services for people a decade after they first
visited the country and set up their Rock of Joy charity. They
once again led a group of 30 young people, aged from 16 to 18,
from the Parish of Heswall churches, the sixth time they have
been to the country where they now support three schools, one
in the capital, Kampala, and two in a rural area. Joining them
on the trip were Wirral dentist Paul Sherrard of Moreton Dental
Care on and his son Ed, a final year dental student in Newcastle.
The charity also runs a farm which already pays for two thirds
of the running costs of the schools with plans to fund the
project completely.
Stephen, 62, said: “It was my sixth trip and the tenth
anniversary of our first visit in 2007 when Cathy was the
inspiration. She had gone out to do a gap year with Oasis Trust
in 2005 and spent six months developing a school in the slums
of Kampala. She loved it and a couple of years later when she
was in university she wanted to go again so together with others
in the church and its youth fellowship we ended up going out,
in total 36 of us. We came back both shocked at the conditions
and realising how easy it would be to make difference, so we’ve
been going back ever since.”
In the ten years of visits they have taken out over 180 young
people from church youth groups and Spire Murrayfield
Hospital have done their bit by providing blood testing services
before departure so that in the event of an accident – Uganda’s
roads are notoriously dangerous – everyone’s blood group is
known.
The schools provide education for 1500 children with 140
housed in an orphanage – many of the parents have died from
HIV which is rife in the country and so is malaria. Their 50-
acre farm is on wetlands and Stephen’s team have hit on an
effective scheme for making money – they plan to buy scrawny
cattle cheap in the dry seasons and fatten them up on the grass
they always have: “Six months later we can sell them for twice
the price,” he said. “If we have 100 head of cattle that should
produce £20,000 a year in income which is a huge return for
them.” Stephen added: “The schools came out of what Cathy did
but for me to go out there and just look at education wouldn’t
be making the best use of my abilities, so we also provide
medical and dental services, including minor operations in
remote villages where there is no access to medical care. We
have a team of about 20 people of which half are Ugandan.
We travel around the villages in the countryside and we can
treat over three hundred people in a day – hard work but very
rewarding. We see a lot of infectious diseases because there are
few antibiotics. We treat everything from skin conditions like
ringworm to malaria which is a big killer since they can’t afford
mosquito nets – our youths put up about 900 mosquito nets in
very simple homes. We saw over 2,500 people and we had two
dentists with us who removed 1,000 teeth as dental hygiene is
very poor there.”
For more on the Rock of Joy Trust, go to www.rockofjoy.co.uk
12 wirrallife.com