Ms. Samalie Kitooleko

Samalie is the nurse in charge of the Uganda Rheumatic Heart Disease Registry. At the Uganda Heart Institute, she takes care of patients with chronic cardiovascular illnesses such as congenital heart disease, myocardial infarction and rheumatic heart disease (RHD). Samalie realized increasing numbers of RHD patients (especially young women) lacked knowledge about their illness and were dying due to preventable complications, which is one of main reasons why she is a champion for patient education.

“It started when I nursed a young female university student who had RHD. She became pregnant and defaulted treatment due to lack of enough medical advice and support. This led to her developing valve thrombosis and died the day of her graduation. I realized this was partly due to knowledge deficit as she was not well informed about the lifestyle while on Warfarin. This prompted me to start counseling young women intending to undergo mechanical valve replacement when they’re admitted to hospital. When I started working with the RHD registry in 2013, the database gave me a greater opportunity to reach out to all of them.”