Where we work

Rakai and neighboring districts....

RHSP is a non profit organization working to improve the public health through research in different communities in Rakai District and the neighboring districts such as Lyantonde, part of Masaka, Kyotera. RHSP combines social, behavioral, epidemiological, and clinical and laboratory research together with service delivery through intensive health education, provision of voluntary counseling and testing and prove of health care to all its community participants.

Since 1988, the Rakai Health Sciences Program has manned a research, data, and administrative infrastructure at the Uganda Virus Research Institute in Entebbe and in Kalisizo, Rakai District. This infrastructure was made possible through funding provided by NIH, World Bank, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, WRAIR and other sponsors. In Kalisizo, the Program rented more than 10 buildings, most of which had been renovated to accommodate expanding activities. Infrastructure development in Kalisizo included the installation of water tanks, electrical generators, a large incinerator for biohazardous waste, a fuel (gas) pump station, parking services, and a maintenance garage for the fleet of 17 vehicles.

Space constraints in the rented buildings in Kalisizo severely limited the Program’s ability to take on new research, clinical care of HIV+ persons, and training. In 2001, the Kalisizo Town Council donated land to enable the construction of a permanent research and clinical facility in the District.

The new Rakai Health Sciences Center

This new complex opened in May 2005 and provides a state-of-the-art research center with extensive space for laboratories, data management, and data storage, as well as clinical facilities, training facilities, and offices for scientists.

Funding for the building was received from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health at Johns Hopkins University, and through University loans. A contract through NIH/NIAID International Center for Excellence in Research is equipping the laboratory.

The laboratory is an air-conditioned, 3,600-square-foot, state-of–the-art facility. It includes rooms designated for lab accession, clinical microbiology, tissue culture, serology, nucleic acid amplification, and laboratory support.

The clinical facility includes a patient waiting and reception area, an outpatient clinic, a pharmacy, an x-ray room, four examination rooms, two operating theaters, a sluice, an autoclave, and storage, as well as patient changing rooms and offices for surgical staff. The two theaters, designed for outpatient surgery, are mainly used for male circumcision at this time, but will provide facilities for colposcopy and other procedures.