Blog

By Kakaire Ayub Kirunda | World Prematurity Day is commemorated on November 17 every year to raise awareness of the challenges and burden of preterm birth globally. According to the World Health Organisation, preterm births occur when mothers deliver before the completion of 37 weeks of pregnancy; 15 million babies are born prematurely every year; […]

By Dr Peter Waiswa | The recently concluded 11th European Congress on Tropical Medicine and International Health shone a light on state-of-the-art updates, developments, and breakthroughs in the field of tropical medicine and global health. I am a co-investigator on the USAID funded Kampala Maternal Newborn  HealthProject (MaNe) in Uganda, a three-year (2019-2021) USAID-funded implementation research project aimed […]

Olga Miltcheva |  “I used to believe that I understood the reality behind the staggering annual global death toll of 2.8 million pregnant women and newborns. The truth is, I only really understood what they had experienced during the birth of my own baby, when I faced my own vulnerability.” Read more.

“Rather than blaming health workers, we should examine our individual and collective efforts towards reducing the avoidable maternal and perinatal deaths. From the expectant woman, family members, health workers, general public, policy makers, media, funders, religious leaders, to ministries, we should all become advocates of a responsive and functional health system,” writes David R. Walugembe […]

BY PROF PETER WAISWA | When Kawuma’s wife went into labour in the wee hours of that night on a date which he doesn’t recall four years ago, his option was to rush her to the nearest government Health Centre IV which serves his Kisenyi slum in Kampala. However, the gate man told him there […]

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 […]