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Donor cuts: Govt devising means to raise 70% funding locally for family planning
On the rise. A woman displays a set of emergency pills. Research has shown that the use of emergency pills by unmarried but sexually active women is growing. PHOTO/RACHEL MABALA.
What you need to know:
- The funding from donors is reducing and this has left a huge gap for us to meet the family planning needs locally, according to government officials.
The Ministry of Health is devising ways of raising money locally to bridge the funding gap of about 70 percent created by donor cuts to finance family planning services.
Dr Richard Mugahi, the Assistant Commissioner in charge of Reproductive and Infant Health at the ministry said government must see how to raise funds locally to bridge this gap and curb high deaths caused by abortions.
“There is a big challenge now, the funding from donors is reducing and this has left a huge gap for us to meet the family planning needs locally. The donors have been funding almost close to 70 percent of the family planning budget. As government agencies, we are thinking of how to raise funds internally to support family planning,” Dr Mugahi said on Tuesday during a stakeholders meeting on Family Planning and Universal Health Coverage in Kampala.
On how the government is doing to raising money locally, Dr Mugahi said Parliament allocated an extra Shs7.9b to reproductive health commodities and that this is where family planning commodities fall as a way of bridging the funding gap.
When asked whether the passing of the anti-gay law could have largely contributed to the donor cuts, Dr Mugahi was non-committal.
“I don’t want to say that it’s because of the anti-gay law, it was bound to happen. Historically, donors don’t support throughout. They will never be here indefinitely,” Dr Mugahi explained.
Adding: “But also, these donors have been having their pressures like the UK and US…They went through the pandemic, and are also supporting some wars coupled with climate change issues. So this donor funding was bound to happen.”
Shortly after President Museveni assented to the controversial anti-homosexuality law, several Western countries cut aid to Uganda for passing a law they said targeted the rights of minority groups.
World Bank too, cut aid arguing that the anti-homosexuality law contradicts the institution’s values of inclusion and non-discrimination, which values they said sit at the heart of their work around the world.
The bank said there would be no new public funding to Uganda presented to the board of executive directors until the additional measures' efficacy has been tested.
Speaking on the sidelines of the event, Precious Mutoru, the Advocacy and Partnerships Manager at Population Services International (PSI) cited the advantages of the government ensuring that family planning services are readily available to those who need them.
Reduction in maternal mortality rates, reduction in poverty, and enabling girls to complete school were some of the benefits of family planning cited by Mutoru.
“Most people access these family planning services through the public sector channels, which is the total market strategy that the Ministry of Health has adopted, which intends to strengthen the private sector to be able to provide family planning services,” Mutoru said.
Likewise, Dr Mugahi revealed that many people now are opting to have manageable families, hence the need to have several family planning service options readily available to them.
