We have just started a three-year project in the Oyam District of Uganda. Our goal is to reach 110,000 people in four sub-counties, helping women, adolescent girls and their children.
Women and children in Oyam face a myriad of dangers associated with pregnancy and childbirth. The major health issues, which are common in poor rural settings with little access to health services, include adolescent pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections and malaria.
Coupled with high levels of poverty, harmful traditional practices and poor sanitation and hygiene infrastructure, women and children are at risk of ill-health and even death. The lack of male involvement in health issues perpetuates these problems.
Women and Children First, with its local partner CUAMM Doctors with Africa, plans to tackle these issues head on through a range of complementary interventions. We will:
- Establish 200 new women’s groups, guided by 100 trained local women, to organise their communities to take action to solve health problems facing women, children and adolescents.
- Provide support to 230 local solidarity groups – groups that save and share funds for health expenditure – expanding their reach to more members of the community.
- Build the capacities of health workers at nine health facilities to deliver high quality and accessible services to women, children and adolescents.
- Train 120 government community health workers and 400 adolescent champions to reach their peers with advice, support and information.
Finally, we will collate learning from the project and share it with decision-makers to advocate for support from the Government of Uganda to replicate and scale-up the project more widely in other sub-counties in Oyam and more widely in Uganda.