Blog

BY GERALDINE AGIREMBABAZI | Mid last month, more than 400 participants from 35 countries of Africa, Europe, Asia and America gathered at Kempinski Hotel Gold Coast city in Accra-Ghana for the 5th African Health Economic and Policy Association (AfHEA) Biennial Scientific Conference to discuss the innovative ways for securing primary health care (PHC) for all. […]

ROGERS MANDU | It is the joy of every mother to walk home with a live baby having carried a pregnancy, regardless of the gestational age. Several stories are documented of women that give birth to preterm babies before 37 completed weeks of gestation. In the six hospitals of Jinja Regional Referral, Iganga General, Kamuli […]

By Darious Kajjo | Busoga like any other region in Uganda has a regional referral system where specialists from the regional hospital support district hospitals in the catchment area for improved health service delivery. However, the quality of care for maternal and newborn services remains poor. The Makerere University School of Public Health (MakSPH) with […]

By Doris Kwesiga | In mid-2017, I attended a meeting preparing for introduction of maternal immunization in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs). A large part of the discussion was around the need to be able to track adverse outcomes in the community, but options on an available cohort to do so were few. The […]

By Elizabeth Hentschel | As I reflect on my past month in Uganda with the Community in which Mothers and Newborns Thrive (COMONETH) Project team in Luuka District of Eastern Uganda, I am overwhelmed by how much I have gained from my internship. I’ve seen firsthand how VHTs (also known as community health workers), provided […]

By Elizabeth Hentschel I am currently interning at the Community in Which Mothers and Newborns Thrive (COMONETH) through Makerere’s Centre for Excellence in Maternal Newborn and Child Health. The COMONETH Project is based in the rural district of Luuka and is composed of three main components- the facility, community, and monitoring and evaluation components. Based […]

By David Mukunya | Kyogero is a popular herbal mixture commonly used in central Uganda used to bath newborns. It is composed of various herbs that are believed to; smoothen the baby’s skin, give blessings to the newborn, immunize the baby against both physical and spiritual diseases, and to improve the child’s intellect. It is […]

Kakaire Ayub Kirunda | They struggle to be accepted by both their families and the community. They have challenges getting transport to health facilities. And even when they get to health facilities, they face infrastructural challenges ranging from unfriendly seats, beds to washrooms. We are talking about women with walking disabilities (WWD) in the eastern […]

By Kajjo Darius | My daily work involves moving around six hospitals in East-central Uganda implementing data strengthening interventions to increase capture and quantifying maternal and newborn indicators. Critical to my work is capturing data on babies born too soon. As I perused through registers in the Newborn Special Unit of Jinja Regional Referral Hospital […]

By Kakaire Ayub Kirunda | AS we commemorated yet another World Prematurity Day on November 17th 620 babies were born prematurely (before 37 completed weeks of gestation) in Uganda by the end of the day. With this happening every single day, up to 226,300 preterm births are registered annually in the country. Globally, preterm birth […]