Health ministry launches new drive to address maternal deaths
Left to Right: Cathy Adengo, the head of Sustainability at Stanbic Bank Uganda, Dr Diana Atwine, the PS Ministry of Health, Sarah Nyachwo Mwaka, project Manager for safe motherhood initiative at Bank of Uganda, Diana Ondoga, Stanbic's CSI manager and Victoria Kyolaba, the health editor at Daily Monitor at the launch of the Together for Mama drive in Kampala on August 26, 2024. PHOTO/COURTESY
The Ministry of Health has launched the “Together for Mama” campaign, a new drive seeking to engage the private sector in addressing high maternal deaths in the country.
“This campaign is basically to bring together all the players because safe motherhood is not a Ministry of Health issue,” Dr Diana Atwine, the Permanent Secretary of the ministry said in an interview after the launch.
She added: “It is everyone's responsibility to make sure that all our mothers that come to deliver do not lose their lives when giving another life.”
According to Atwine, the campaign will not only increase participation of all Ugandans, but also help in bridging gaps created by limited government funding.
“So, this safe motherhood campaign which started three years ago is yielding results because it is bringing together more people to support us to give us equipment, mama kits and other things that we need to make our mothers get better services in our facilities where we are not able to put that equipment as Government," she added.
The new campaign falls under the Corporate Society for Safe Motherhood. Safe Motherhood is an initiative of the Ministry of Health, in partnership with willing private sector companies and the public.
Currently, Uganda still loses about 189 mothers out of 100,000 live births, but this is a decline from 336 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2016, according to government statistics.
Ms Catherine Poran, the Chief Executive (CE) of Stanbic Business Incubator, said they intend to raise at least Shs500 million to support different health facilities in the area of safe motherhood. She said they will have a safe motherhood walk on the first weekend of October.
“Last year alone, we spent Shs300 million on maternal and safe motherhood intervention including donations of equipment, and amenities to health facilities,” she observed.
