Kalongo Hospital: Celebrating The Golden Jubilee Of Healing

Text & photos by : R. N. Ayago

TUCKED away in the hilly expanse of Agago County, Pader District, is the Doctor Ambrosoli Memorial Hospital of Kalongo. The only one in the district, the health facility started by a team of Comboni Missionaries fifty years ago, serves close to half a million people. (In the picture: Bwola dancers entertaining the congregation)

It was, therefore, fitting that the Archdiocese of Gulu, led by Metropolitan Archbishop John Baptist Odama, congregated at Kalongo to celebrate the golden jubilee of the hospital, started by Fr Alfred Malandra as a dispensary. He was supported by a Comboni Sister, Eletta Mantiero, who worked at Kalongo with dedication.

Northern Uganda celebrated fifty years of its service to the people, with a grand culmination on January 22, 2010, when Archbishop Odama led Mass. At the event, congregants were told the health facility was named after a dedicated fallen Comboni priest, Father Dr Giuseppe Ambrosoli, who dedicated and laid down his life for the people of Kalongo, when he succumbed to a contagious pandemic he was treating.