Wentz Medical CentresIn the summer of 2004, USANA Founder Dr. Myron Wentz traveled to northern Uganda, where he visited several impoverished refugee camps. One camp was home to 33,000 children for whom disease and malnutrition were a way of life. Driven to action by that heart-wrenching experience, Dr. Wentz partnered with Children’s Hunger Fund (CHF) to send food to the camp’s children and help families begin building homes and growing crops. In little more than a year, malnutrition was reduced by 90 percent and the refugee population was reduced by more than 60 percent.
Fueled by this success, Dr. Wentz resolved to establish a state-of-the-art medical center for the diagnosis and prevention of disease in Africa. Dr. Wentz not only provided the funding, he also traveled to Uganda to personally select and purchase all of the diagnostic equipment for the laboratory. On August 1, 2005, Dr. Wentz and CHF opened the doors of the Wentz Medical Centre in Gaba, Uganda, and in less than six weeks, the center had treated more than 500 children.
Today, the modern facility serves a community of 300,000 people, many of whom suffer from HIV/AIDS or have been orphaned by the disease. The facility provides both educational training and diagnostic care for women and children, including testing for malaria, HIV, and intestinal viruses.
A second Wentz Medical Centre opened in 2009 to serve children in Cambodia who have been affected by diseases such as malaria and HIV. USANA also funded the building of a maternity wing in Malawi, and in 2011 the new Children’s Hunger Fund Malawi Medical Center opened and was named after USANA’s founder.