We all need to have the same level of treatment in Africa as in other countries as a form of human rights.

We do major surgeries, we do complex operations that are necessary for the patients to live a normal life, to live a long life that they wouldn't live otherwise.

So we are really able to give a much, much better quality of life to these children.

Here in Uganda, over half the population is under the age of 18,

with a child mortality rate close to 15 times more than, for example, the United

Kingdom.

There's a drastic shortage of medical care available for children, especially when it comes

to pediatric surgery.

Uganda needs about 150 pediatric surgeons, and yet in 2021,

there were only four in the entire country.

In the same year, a new children's hospital opened its doors in

interval built and run by the Italian NGO emergency. I am Lulu Jemima and for the BBC World Service I want to find out if this one

hospital could change the future of health care for my country's children.

Before setting off from home in Kampala, I speak with a consultant surgeon at Soroti Regenary Faro Hospital, Professor Mary Margaret Adjico.

She spent years trying to address the lack of adequate surgical treatment for children.

A child is not a young adult.

A child has an atomicol structures which have to be paid a lot of attention when you are giving anesthesia.

Like a children have big tongue, they have a short neck, and even maybe the abdomen is protuberance and then the heads are usually maybe large.

So all these have to be taken into consideration when we are dealing with the pediatric surgery.

So it is still an area that we really, as a country, need to put more efforts.

We need still to train more doctors, pediatric surgeons, pediatric esthyologists,

and even pediatric nurses.

...