Lacor Hospital is a complex institution, comprising of the main Hospital, the three Peripheral Health Centres at Amuru, Opit and Pabo, the Nurse Training and the Laboratory Training schools. Lacor Hospital refers to the Hospital complex, the Hospital refers to the main Hospital only and the Health Centres refer to Amuru, Opit and Pabo Health Centres.
The Hospital is located 6 kilometres west of Gulu town, the regional capital and 340 km north of the national capital, Kampala, it started as a small Hospital in 1959, founded by the Comboni missionaries. Currently, it has a bed capacity of 476 beds offering referral services, primarily serving the population of Gulu and Amuru districts but also receiving patients from other parts of Uganda.
It offers services ranging from curative, promotive, preventive and rehabilitative health care services including specialist services and is a training centre for different cadres of medical personnel. In order to further improve accessibility of health services to the community, Lacor Hospital constructed three satellite Health Centres in Amuru, Opit and Pabo. Each Health Centre is located about 40 km away from the Lacor Hospital.
Lacor Hospital is mainly funded from three main sources: the delegated funds from government of Uganda, user fees and mostly from foreign donations. A small proportion of revenue (about 2%) is locally generated.
Gulu and Amuru districts, where Lacor Hospital and its Health Centres are located, are bordered by eight districts: Adjumani, Arua and Nebbi to the West; Oyam, Bulisa and Masindi to the South and Kitgum and Pader to the East. The northern border of Amuru district boarders South Sudan. The two districts have a projected population of 366,200 for Gulu and 215,500 for Amuru.
For about 22 years, both districts have had insecurity, which has led to many deaths and disruption of life, with massive displacement of people, most of whom had ended up either in urban areas or in protected camps for the Internally Displaced. The IDP-camps are now in the process of being closed. In the Acholi region, more than 80% of the entire population has already returned to their original homes.
Normal life, food production, education, health and other social services had all been disrupted by the insecurity for all this time and Gulu district, which until recently included Amuru district, suffered of some of the worst health indicators in the Country. Less than 10% of the adult population is formally employed and 75% of households survive on subsistence farming.
Lacor Hospital’s contribution to the health sector performance
The facility-based private not for profit (FB PNFP) sub-sector is a key component of the national health sector, whose outputs are included in the sector outputs and monitored by the HSSP II (Health Sector Strategic Plan II) and PEAP (Poverty Eradication Action Plan indicators.
In the performance assessment of the Country’s hospitals for FY 2008/09, Lacor Hospital ranked second after Mbale Government Hospital among the Regional and Large PNFP hospitals as far as total service output, measured as standard units of output (SUO) is concerned.
The total contribution of Lacor Hospital Complex to the National Health System is, of course, much wider since it runs also three Health Centres III, 2 schools, internships for doctors and undergraduate medical programs.
Gulu and Amuru Districts Health indicators
Generally, the district health indicators are poor compared to the national average, with the exception of water coverage and supervised delivery, which show better indicators than the Uganda national average.
The maternal mortality rates stands at 610 per 100,000 live births while the Infant Mortality rates is at 149 per 1,000 live births, almost double that of the national average of 88 per 1,000 live births. Under 5 Mortality rate is at 250, while the national figure is at 152 per 1,000 live births. Life Expectancy at Birth is 40.9 years. The crude birth rate is 53.7 per 1,000 and the crude death rate 21.7 per 1,000. In Gulu and Amuru districts there are 60 health units (4 hospitals, 2 Health Centres of level IV, 9 of level III, 33 of level II and 12 of level I), but only 30% of the population lives within 5 km from a health facility.