By Marc Sklar MD, MPH | Executive Director Brick by Brick Partners
Access to skilled care is a critical need for Ugandan women. Each year 7,000 women die in Uganda due to complications of pregnancy. Access to care is impeded by the inability to afford transport to health facilities, and the poor quality of roads. Mama Rescue is an emergency dispatch platform helping mothers by using a voucher system. Our Babies & Mother Alive Program partners with local taxi and motorcycle drivers to ensure that laboring mothers reach health facilities in time.
In our districts of Rakai and Kyotera women often lack access to skilled attendants at delivery. Every year over 20,000 women require emergency transport to health facilities when they are in labor. In Uganda, delay to reach health centers and hospitals, where life-saving care can be given, results in the deaths of 7000 women and 45,000 newborns every year. Brick by Brick's Babies and Mothers Alive (BAMA) Program is partnering with 48 health centers to improve maternal and newborn health care.
Mama Rescue Program is an emergency dispatch system using a mobile phone platform. A district-wide public-private partnership, we leverage networks of locally available taxi drivers to create a transportation/ referral system for mothers ensuring access to skilled attendance at delivery. This program is a partnership with MTN Foundation, providing: transport for mothers in labor from home to health center and emergency transport from health center to hospital in the event of complications.
Over the past six months, Brick by Brick has been fortunate to receive significant funding of $350,000 EUR or approximately $390,000 over there years, from Enabel, the Belgian Development Agency. Addiionally, we have secured over $20,000 of in-kind support from MTN, the largest mobile phone network provider in Africa.
Over the past six months the entire world has been affected by the COVID pandemic. Uganda has been in a complete shutdown over the past six weeks which has forced us to cancel or severely limit our activities across all of our programs. In spite of these challenges, we have still accomplished a great deal as reflected in the Mama Rescue Project Progress Summary January to May 2020 which is attached.
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