Lasagna dinner in RB to help Uganda children’s hospital

San Rafael Catholic Church is welcoming everyone to its lasagna dinner on Saturday, July 30 that benefits Holy Innocents Children’s Hospital in Africa.

Free-will donations will be accepted for the dinner that starts at 6 p.m. in San Rafael’s parish hall, 17252 Bernardo Center Drive in Rancho Bernardo.

Lee Haney, Holy Innocents’ financial officer, said there will be a 50/50 drawing, a silent auction and items made in Uganda available for purchase. Cash, checks and credit cards will be accepted.

Haney said organizers are hoping to raise $100,000 through the event, which is what they collected last year. They are planning for around 400 attendees.

He said proceeds will go toward equipment, supplies, furnishings and staff housing at the Ugandan hospital where its new surgical center is under construction. It is 80-to-90 percent complete and tentatively set to open in October. This second phase work began last year.

Officials said the 2,753-square-foot center will provide up to 200 pediatric surgeries per month to children ages 12 and younger. It will include two operating rooms, pre-op and post-op areas, a diagnostic center, X-ray and anesthesia areas and exam spaces.

“By the end of June, 129,000 children have been treated at the outpatient clinic and hospital together,” Haney said.

Holy Innocents Children’s Hospital is a non-political, non-sectarian, faith-based facility that provides medical care to all children, regardless of religious background, on a sliding cost scale based on families’ ability to pay.

The hospital was co-founded by Poway resident Lee Freestone and the late Harold “Tom” Thomas of Rancho Bernardo in 2007. The Rancho Bernardo-based organization consists of many San Rafael parishioners and other groups in the area, including Rotary International.

Since 2007, it has raised more than $2.5 million, Haney said, adding 97 cents of every dollar goes toward the hospital since it is a volunteer-run non-profit. By 2009 the hospital’s first phase began, which included constructing and equipping a 60-bed hospital, administration building, outpatient department, lab, pharmacy and X-ray facility.

The dream for a children’s hospital to serve the youngest Ugandans with little affordable access to medical care started more than a decade ago when the Most Rev. Paul Bakyenga, archbishop of Mbarara, Uganda, visited local Catholic parishes in the United States, including San Rafael. When San Rafael parishioners asked him what they could do to help, his answer was to build a children’s hospital.

At the time, one out of seven children in Uganda died before reaching their fifth birthday, about 13,000 annually with another 7,000 dying between the ages of 6 and 12, officials said. The three leading causes of childhood death in Africa at that time were malaria, respiratory infection and dysentery and officials said three-fourths of all cases are survivable if treated in time.

In recent years, the top four illnesses have been dysentery, upper respiratory infection, pneumonia and lower intestinal tract infections, officials said. Malaria has been widely prevented due to measures Holy Innocents promotes, such as distribution of insecticide treated nets for use while sleeping.