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What We Do

Health education, prevention and screening first — treatment and referral where they are needed. Delivered right where the children already are.

Our Approach

A mini-hospital that drives to the school

We go where hospitals do not. Each mobile clinic is staffed by a rotating multidisciplinary team and equipped to run the full public health sequence in one stop: health education and promotion, disease prevention, screening, treatment and referral.

This is public health before it is clinical medicine. Teaching a school how not to fall ill is far cheaper than treating it afterwards. Treatment matters — it is simply not where we start.

  • ✓Prevention-led — health education, promotion and sensitisation are the primary objective; testing and treatment support them.
  • ✓Accessibility — reaching remote and underserved communities static clinics never reach.
  • ✓Timely, affordable and patient-centred — care delivered on school grounds, aligned with the academic calendar, and reliable enough that a school can plan around it.
  • ✓Continuity — structured referrals into the existing public health system for complex cases.
  • ✓Community ownership — built with School Management Committees, head teachers, teachers, parents and pupil peer mentors.

The UGX 10,000 term contribution. Families who can afford it give UGX 10,000 per child per term — about $8 a year. It is reduced or waived where a family cannot pay, and no child is ever turned away.

How the contribution works
Families who can afford it are invited to give UGX 10,000 per child per term — UGX 30,000 a year, about $8.06. Paid in full it covers 61% of the $13.21 it costs to care for a child for a year, with sponsors covering the remaining $5.15. It is collected termly, through the school, from families whose children are well at the time — never at the point of care. If a family can afford less, they pay less. If they cannot pay at all, care is not withheld. We plan on 50% collection, deliberately conservative. No child is ever turned away, and the care a contributing child receives is identical to the care a non-contributing child receives.
Triage and records desk at a Healing Wheels Uganda camp
Our Services

What a Healing Wheels camp delivers

Six packages, delivered in one stop, every time we come to a school — plus three programmes that run on the school’s own calendar between visits.

See all services →

Our Flagship

Today, our whole focus is one initiative

Everything we run right now serves school-going children. It is where the need is clearest, and where we can prove the model before we grow.

Pupils at their desks during a school camp
● Active now

School-Going Children Initiative

Fully sponsored, multidisciplinary care delivered on school grounds — screening, treatment, health education and referral — so children stay healthy, attend class and learn. Aligned to Uganda’s academic calendar and public health strategies.

144,000
children targeted / year
$13.21
cost per child / year
Explore the initiative →
Where We Want To Go

Four initiatives on our roadmap

KidCare, Mama, Single Mother and ElderCare — the same mobile-health model, extended to others the system leaves behind. Not yet running; being designed and funded.

See the roadmap →

A clinician examining a child’s hand
The Challenge We Are Answering

Uganda’s children are in school — but too often too sick to learn

In the Elgon sub-region, where we work, primary completion is the highest in Uganda at 93% — and Primary Leaving Examination performance is the lowest in the country at 43%. Children here are getting to school and finishing school. They are not learning.

Uganda is also one of five countries that together account for more than half of all malaria cases worldwide.

2–6

School days lost per malaria episode

1 in 3

Girls miss school because of menstruation

1 in 4

Under-fives are stunted

69%

Public health posts unfilled nationally

Sources for these figures
WHO World Malaria Report 2024 · Nankabirwa et al., Trop Med Int Health 2014 · pooled meta-analysis of 18 sub-Saharan African studies · Uganda Demographic and Health Survey 2022 · Uganda Ministry of Health staffing returns, December 2024

This is the work — here is how to fuel it

Every screening, treatment and referral runs on people who believe a well child learns best. Be one of them.

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