Progressive Health Partnership in Uganda

One year ago, we launched the Omukazi Namagara ('The Woman is Life') Program (ONP), a dynamic maternal and neonatal health initiative in our partner communities, Kashongi and Kitura, Uganda. Building on our previous Safe Motherhood Initiative, in the ONP we have collaborated with our government counterparts on the following efforts:

(1) Improvements to service provision at the government health centers in Kashongi and Kitura by bolstering staffing, medications, and supplies to serve pregnant women and new mothers
(2) An education campaign on reproductive and child health
(3) Follow-up home visits by a team of PHP-trained community health workers during and after the pregnancy

During the course of this past year, we have seen the demand for health services at these health centers increase dramatically. Preliminary data collection from one of our partner communities shows that prenatal care visits have more than doubled, and that the local health center has experienced a nearly 60% increase in monthly deliveries.  This means fewer home deliveries, giving both mothers and newborns a better chance at a healthy pregnancy and a healthy life.

Your support and generosity have been invaluable in this progress, and we hope to continue our partnership with you. For this new year, we have begun planning our next project: Healthy Beginnings, Healthy Lives: A Campaign for Maternal and Neonatal Health. From the substantial results we've seen in our provision of antenatal health in the past few years, we would like to extend the same quality of service to the postnatal period for the new mother and her newborn. This will include things like immunizations and family planning counseling. For one mother, our entire spectrum of prenatal, intranatal, and postnatal services costs just $20. Thus, with just $5,000, we can serve an additional 250 mothers and their newborn children. We invite you to make a charitable donation of any size as a meaningful gift this new year. Please help us reach our goal!

Finally, please take a look at our new documentary here! Learn more about the communities and the issues we're committed to through this short but powerful video about our work with the communities of Kashongi and Kitura.

Thank you once again for your support, and we wish you the best in 2014!

Progressive Health Partnership

Links:

• Visit the PHP Website
• Watch the PHP Documentary

Happy October, everyone!

We're glad to report that the Omukazi Namagara Program (ONP) is running smoothly! Our team has been active in making sure the service delivery and program logistics have been going well, and are continuously working to support the health centers and train and work with the village health team (VHT) members. Two of our staff members, Joram and Diana, are becoming increasingly skilled in their enumeration work, and Alex is also making significant strides in handling the IT end of this project. Additionally, we've also gotten a new health-in-charge (HIC) who's amazing and genuinely dedicated to this work. 

This past summer, Michelle Goodwin, the Chairwoman of PHP's Board of Advisors, was able to make an on-the-ground visit to our project site in Uganda. She was able to meet with our Village Health Team members and subcounty and district officials, and we were able to have some productive discussions and build stronger connections with local leaders!