LIVERPOOL Women’s Hospital staff have already helped save lives in Uganda with an innovative donation scheme.

Staff are boosting the Women’s Hospital Trust and other grants to fund the partnership with Mulago Hospital with their Pennies from Heaven scheme.

Staff round down their monthly salaries to the nearest pound and the spare pennies fund medical staff travelling to Uganda and improving facilities there.

Dr Andrew Weeks, of Liverpool Women’s, has aided the saving of lives at Mulago Hospital, Kampala, by introducing some ultrasound facilities there.

“The medical staff in Mulago have become extremely skilled in working in that difficult environment,” he says.

“You get advanced cases with women in very dire straits. Medical students are expected to do things they would be allowed to tackle here, as the other option for patients is zero treatment.

“Often women go for many days with their babies dead in the uterus. Or there are caesarean hysterectomies where the women has been in labour for days and the uterus has burst.

“You must operate fast to save the mother, remove her uterus and, tragically, a dead baby.

“Early prevention here means we’re not used to dealing with such horrible calamities, or conditions like tertiary syphilis.

“Diagnosis can be difficult for the Ugandan staff, so we help with our teaching and training.”

Andrew is a trustee of an Ugandan orphanage, where all the children lost their parents to HIV.

The first visitor from Mulago to Liverpool was obstetrician Dr Sarah Nakubulwa.