Katusiime Christine
Christine has been an RHD patient advocate for many years. As a heart hero, she knows first-hand the experiences and challenges heart patients face in Uganda. After many years of misdiagnosis, Christine was eventually diagnosed with RHD at 11 years old. Two years later, she was selected for corrective heart surgery performed at Amitra Heart Institute in India sponsored by Gift of Life International. With regained health, Christine went on to complete her degree in Industrial and Organisational Psychology at Makarere University.
Christine has been the Chair of the Uganda Heart Institute RHD Patient Support Group since 2018. This group provides support to medical and surgical providers by working directly with patients on a peer-to-peer basis. In recognition of her advocacy work, Christine received Medtronic Philanthropy’s prestigious Bakken Award in 2018. In 2019, she received a grant from World Heart Federation for the RHD Support Group-UHI to create other patient support groups in cardiac satellite clinics to raise awareness about RHD. She has travelled internationally to speak on behalf of the RHD patient experience and currently sits on the World Health Organisation’s Guidelines Development Group for the Prevention and Treatment for Rheumatic Fever and Rheumatic Heart Disease. Christine has a passion for bridging the knowledge gap about heart disease in the rural communities, fighting community stigma and the myths and misconceptions held in our local communities about people with heart diseases, and giving support to people living with heart disease to best live a productive life..
Susan Perkins
Susan’s interest in rheumatic heart disease patient advocacy began with a 2-year assignment as a US Peace Corps volunteer in rural South Africa. From there, she joined the University of Cape Town’s Children’s Heart Disease Research Unit’s global rheumatic heart disease programme. She has since relocated back to the US, now living in California, but has maintained her passion for Africa and relationships with many of her patient and heart disease advocate friends around the world. Her friends in Uganda have a special place in her heart.
Susan’s role in FAAYO is primarily in the background, assisting with strategic planning, organisational logistics and professional writing. She sees FAAYO as an opportunity to contribute to improved health and well-being for heart disease patients in the rural areas of Uganda where basic health information and access to care is typically limited.
Mpiima Moses
Mpiima was born in Katwe, Kampala. From a young age, he liked music and he joined the church choir at the age of 10. This is where his musical career was launched. Through musical events like street cyphers and freestyle, “Moses M” gained a huge fan base and this inspired his first track “Ghetto Police”, a song he wrote based on the real-life facts he was facing.
All through his life, Mpiima felt a pressure in his chest that he could not explain. He coped with that pressure until one day, on stage, he passed out. Finally in 2011, Mpiima went through a successful open-heart operation at the University Hospital of Kiel in Germany, a process funded by his friends, family and the hip-hop community.
Mpiima is now a family man and has continued to pursue his musical career, performing on international platforms in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Kenya, Germany and Tanzania. But he has not forgotten the kindness of his friends and music community in helping him through his heart surgery and recovery. It is because of this experience he has been an active heart disease patient advocate and has decided to give back to his community through becoming a founding member of FAAYO Community Heart Health Initiative.
Logose Ruth
Ruth is an RHD survivor who has had a successful outcome that she wants to share with her community. Ruth feels that prevention and early detection are key to living a healthy productive life. Ruth is from Bweyogerere in Wakiso District. She felt she was a normal healthy child, but her family noticed she wasn’t able to carry the heavy water containers – complaining of pain in her chest. They thought she was just being a lazy child.
Ruth completed training in food production management in 2011 and found work at a hotel in Kampala. She later took a job in Durban, South Africa and this is where she started to experience severe symptoms and landed in hospital. After returning to Uganda, she experienced a long process of traditional treatments and misdiagnosis, Ruth was diagnosed with rheumatic heart disease at age 26 in 2013 at Mulago Hospital in Kampala. She had a heart valve repair procedure at Salam Hospital in Khartoum and has since been healthy and vibrant with no further heart disease symptoms.
Ruth has been the Vice Chair of the Uganda Heart Institute RHD Patient Support Group since 2018. Ruth is also active in her church, teaching Sunday School for 18 years. She loves the interaction with children and young people and has used the opportunities with the support group and her Sunday School classes to provide health messaging about the importance of treating a sore throat and taking heart disease symptoms seriously. Ruth has joined FAAYO to spread these messages of awareness, hope, prevention, and early detection to a wider community in our targeted areas in Wakiso and Hoima Districts.
Our heart surgeries were very expensive – we could never have afforded them as individuals. We were sponsored by people and organisations who loved seeing us healthy and smiling. We feel we should share the same love we were given and fight heart diseases by creating awareness because we believe ‘’prevention is better than cure’’! If we or our families had known about the initial signs of heart disease and taken them seriously for appropriate medical attention, maybe it wouldn’t have ended with heart surgery at young ages.