The Wheelchair Sustainability Project

Bringing wheelchairs to underserved communities in Uganda

Patients are similar no matter where the location. For more than 8 years, students and faculty from the College of Health Professions have participated in medical mission trips bringing health care services to underserved regions like Uganda, Nicaragua, and Vietnam. Just as in the states mobility impairment can be the result of a traumatic brain injury, disease, or the result of a congenital condition. The difference is that in many developing countries, without access to mobility devices, many of these individuals must crawl or be carried by a family member and can be entirely dependent on others for assistance and basic necessities such as water and food.

Witnessing the need in these countries has inspired our team to help change what’s possible for the residents of Uganda by developing, piloting, and refining a business plan to impact wheel chair production.

The program is a collaborative effort with OneWorld Health, a non-profit organization with a mission to provide sustainable quality healthcare solutions to people in need, as well as Ugandan stakeholders such as disability groups and community organizations. We hope to develop a long-term sustainable plan for access to wheelchairs and mobility capacity in Masindi.

Our initial goal is to provide Roughrider Wheelchairs in a pilot program that will assess and deliver wheelchairs for each recipient. These chairs are different than what we typically see in the states. They are built for the environment of Uganda and are easily repairable. Next year, we hope that our project will continue to grow and that ultimately, we can send 145 wheelchairs to Uganda in May of 2020.

These students not only share their knowledge with Ugandan healthcare professionals they also learn from their experience. MUSC students volunteer in a number of free clinics throughout the tri-county area and they often return with insights on creating patient-centered care, improved techniques learned in the classroom, and refine communication and patient interaction skills that will help them become successful professional health care providers.

The wheelchairs will be assembled by faculty and students at MUSC from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, May 1st and the students depart for Uganda on May 3rd.

About MUSC

Founded in 1824 in Charleston, MUSC is the oldest medical school in the South, as well as the state’s only integrated, academic health sciences center with a unique charge to serve the state through education, research and patient care. Each year, MUSC educates and trains more than 3,000 students and 700 residents in six colleges: Dental Medicine, Graduate Studies, Health Professions, Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy. The state’s leader in obtaining biomedical research funds, in fiscal year 2018, MUSC set a new high, bringing in more than $276.5 million. For information on academic programs, visit http://musc.edu.

As the clinical health system of the Medical University of South Carolina, MUSC Health is dedicated to delivering the highest quality patient care available, while training generations of competent, compassionate health care providers to serve the people of South Carolina and beyond. Comprising some 1,600 beds, more than 100 outreach sites, the MUSC College of Medicine, the physicians’ practice plan, and nearly 275 telehealth locations, MUSC Health owns and operates eight hospitals situated in Charleston, Chester, Florence, Lancaster and Marion counties. In 2018, for the fourth consecutive year, U.S. News & World Report named MUSC Health the number one hospital in South Carolina. To learn more about clinical patient services, visit http://muschealth.org.

MUSC and its affiliates have collective annual budgets of $3 billion. The more than 17,000 MUSC team members include world-class faculty, physicians, specialty providers and scientists who deliver groundbreaking education, research, technology and patient care.