Ubuntu Clinique provides critical healthcare to thousands of the people in the Gasenyi region of Burundi who have been affected by conflict, displacement, hunger, and critical health concerns.
Since opening in 2016, Ubuntu has grown to a bustling hospital with over 100 beds, including an operating room. The clinic continues to expand to meet the needs of the community and keep up with government requirements for healthcare facilities.
EMI Canada is partnering with Ubuntu Clinique to provide an Architectural Needs Assessment remotely through online meetings and other online correspondence.
Project Scope
Ubuntu Clinique first opened its doors as a small, difference-making clinic in 2016. Founder Jackson Nahayo had started the process three years earlier by shipping a 40-foot container of medical equipment from Canada to Burundi.
Jackson’s story is unique and powerful. He fled Burundi as a child due to ethnic violence in the country, separated from his family. After living in the DRC and Zambia, Jackson immigrated to Canada as a refugee. He graduated high school, reunited with his family in Burundi, and started an NGO to build a youth centre.
Jackson returned to Canada to pursue higher education, receiving a degree in the field of medicine. He now lives in Burundi with his wife and daughter managing the day-to-day operations of Ubuntu Clinique, which has quickly grown into a 100-bed hospital that includes, among other things, an operating room, maternity ward, lab, pharmacy, and diagnostic equipment that was previously not easily accessible to the community.
Ubuntu is continuing to expand, and has sought EMI’s help to further evaluate its needs, calculate additional space needed, and strategize its next steps.
To do this, EMI Canada will engage remotely with Jackson and his Canadian advisory committee to ask questions and collect information on the clinic’s needs, current space, and available land. This is anticipated to require 3-5 online meetings with Jackson and his advisory committee, as well as some internal online meetings with the project team.
The primary deliverable for this project will be a Needs Assessment Summary Report, complete with high-level spatial relationship diagrams, to help guide Ubuntu’s next steps. It is anticipated that this assessment may lead to a second EMI project, which will include a site visit to Ubuntu, in the near future.
Do you feel your knowledge and experience with healthcare design and planning could help our team and Ubuntu Clinique? If so, we would love to hear from you!
— Braden Swab, EMI Canada trip leader
Needs
Architecture: Position filled