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You may have heard about how we were first introduced to the Bukonzo Joint Cooperative by Dr Jackie Smalldridge back in 2016, if not you can read about it here. Now in 2018 we are relaunching our Single Origin coffee from Bukonzo Joint as a new crop comes in. This seasons harvest is refreshingly different, it's a rich full bodied coffee with syrupy sweetness, mild citrus acidity and a lingering chocolatey aftertaste with strong notes of molasses, hazelnut and cocoa nibs.
The launch coincides with another trip by Auckland doctor, Jackie Smalldridge to the Kagando Hospital, just 20 minutes down the road from the cooperative. On this trip Jackie and her team saw 102 women and successfully completed 80 fistula operations. The Kagando Hospital uses local radio announcements to get the news out about the arrival of the NZ & Australian doctors and two of the hospital nurses head out into the neighbouring communities to screen patients before their arrival. Some women travel for days to reach the hospital for the much needed surgery, it is life changing, some come across the border from Congo and some from the Bukonzo Joint Coffee Cooperative community down the road.
Jackie with some of her patients at the Kagando Hospital, Uganda.
This time round Jackie and her team successfully introduced pessaries as a non-surgical management of prolapse. Australian Grace Carey kindly donated the pessaries, which were trialled in all patients - giving them the opportunity to choose between surgery and long-term pessary usage. Grace developed and manufactures these pessaries in Melbourne, specifically for use in low resource countries. She accompanied the team to Kagando and was able to see them “in action”! 15 women went home self-managing pessaries - choosing this over a surgical procedure.
One of the patient wards in the Kagando Hospital, Uganda and Jackie and her team in surgery.
A mission of this size costs around $35,000 which includes the surgeries, mobilisation of patients, patient food and patient transport. This money also includes travel and food for the ladies who went home wearing a pessary - as they stayed in the hospital for 3 days to ensure they were comfortable and happy.
The sales of this coffee continue to support Jackie and her teams future trips to the region, for every 200g retail pack you buy we donate $1.00 to Medical Aid Abroad. This non-profit voluntary organisation uses the money raised to supply much needed equipment to the ongoing fistula project at the Kagando Hospital. MAA also assist health work in other developing countries through supplying surplus medical supplies, equipment & backup support where
appropriate.
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