The hospital began with a special mission to help the Batwa pygmies who were displaced from the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest after it was made a National Park in 1991.

While the hospital was started particularly to provide health care to the Twa, it quickly found itself treating all people living in the area.

Batwa pygmies inhabited the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest for thousands of years, but became conservation refugees largely as a result of efforts to protect endangered mountain gorillas.

Malaria has always been the biggest killer in the Bwindi area, and is easily preventable simply by sleeping under a mosquito net.

The Byumba team teaches in local schools and villages, and makes a special effort to reach out to the Batwa pygmies with family planning, HIV testing, pregnancy care, immunization, and education about clean water and prevention of malaria.

It costs a minimum of 540,000 UGX ($245) to give a full package of health care to every malnourished child on the ward.

Bwindi's child health services get support from Sustain for Life, a charity in the UK and TOUCH Uganda in the United States but there is a lot more to be done.

Adding the money spent on staff, drugs, electricity and other supplies it costs about $30 a day to keep a child in Hospital.

They: Every two years a Household Survey of all homes in the Bwindi area is conducted to measure the progress of the Community Health interventions led by the hospital.

To see the latest survey click here Bwindi Community Hospital sends its HIV team into the surrounding area three days each week for a mobile testing and treatment clinic.

More than two hundred local people living with HIV have joined one of the hospital's patient support groups, which meet in different parts of the Bwindi area each month.

A drama group has been started which tours schools and churches, delivering a delightfully funny and poignant play about a man whose life is changed when he finds out he is HIV positive and accesses treatment.

Every two years the hospital conducts a community survey that provides information about which parts of the Bwindi area have the largest number of untested people.

Counselors and laboratory staff visit these places in order to give all people an opportunity to know their HIV status.

Uganda has one of the highest fertility rates in the world at seven children per woman, and has the youngest population on the planet with a median age of less than fifteen.

Large families trap people in poverty with not enough money for food, schooling and health care for their children.

High fertility rates are dangerous for women, and make it hard for them to escape traditional childbearing roles.

A 3% annual population growth rate is unsustainable for the environment, and leaves younger generations without enough water or land for cultivation.

The hospital is supplied with drugs from the Government of Uganda but the salaries of the staff, transport costs, and all of the training and support given to the village health workers rely on donations.

The hospital has written a four-year strategic plan describing how to reach the target of 40% contraceptive prevalence, a goal that will require about $20,000 per year.

Two or three days each month the VHP's attend workshops led by the hospital to learn about different aspects of health, and takes the knowledge back to villages.

BCH works in close relationship with the community through Bataka groups to implement eQuality currently in the three sub counties of Kayonza, Mpungu and Kanyantorogo, although due to high demand, a few Bataka groups in Kiruhura and Kanungu town council were included last year.