Top Story: Two Lira Students Unveil Innovative Device to Ease Healthcare Strain
Lira City, September 7, 2025 – Two enterprising Senior Five students from Mentor Secondary School—Ronny Obote and Morrish Apunyo—have developed a groundbreaking Patient Monitoring System (PMS) designed to help overstretched healthcare workers by automating vital signs monitoring.
What’s impressive:
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The PMS tracks temperature, heartbeats, and breathing, while also calculating breaths per minute and analyzing metabolic respiration.
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It includes a beeping alarm that triggers when breathing stops for more than five seconds and can even automatically call a doctor in an emergency.
But that’s not all—they also built:
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A drip shutter that automatically stops IV drips once the medicine runs out—relieving health workers from constant monitoring. M
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A syringe gun that delivers injections at a controlled rate, minimizing risk and enabling staff to attend to multiple patients.
Why it matters:
The students were driven to innovate after learning that Uganda’s healthcare sector is operating at only 40% of recommended staffing levels—a crippling shortage fueling patient care gaps.
They showcased their technologies at a youth-focused exhibition at the Lira Mayor’s Garden, organized by the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy (NIMD), the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development, and the Multiparty Youth Forum (MYF).
What’s next:
While enthusiastic about their innovations, Ronny and Morrish face a major hurdle—limited funding. To finalize their prototypes and scale up production, they estimate needing around 20 million Ugandan shillings (UGX).
Their teacher and project mentor, Allan Gideon Odur, says the school has already been stretched by limited resources and is seeking further support for such promising student initiatives.
At the showcase, Gender Minister Betty Amongi praised the students for their ingenuity and appealed to both the government and development partners to back such homegrown solutions.
