Source: East African Business Week
Hoima — When labour pains strike, Violet Kobusingye has to endure a bumpy painful 30 kilometre ride from her village Mbaraara to Hoima Referral Hospital in Hoima town to get better medical pre and post natal care.
That has been the routine for all the three children that she has brought to life.
Kobusingye's ordeal is shared by only a fortunate few women who can afford the "luxury" of giving birth to a child in a referral hospital
The majority of the women in rural Hoima have to deal with the uncertainty of giving birth without the attention of a trained health worker in their homes.
Mbaraara, a village in Kitoba Sub County, Hoima District, and western Uganda has been having a dilapidated government funded health center two without a midwife and antenatal care.
With an estimated 120 births registered in a catchment area of Kitoba and its neighboring villages annually, traditional birth attendants and village senior women have filled the gap.
The lack of trained heath workers (Midwives) puts the life of expectant mothers to risk at extreme times lead to loss of life.
The story of Mbaraara village is shared by mothers across rural Uganda, a country where access to good health care is a preserve for the urban few dwellers.
Mothers across the country each day go through the agony of giving birth without proper anti natal care through pregnancy and midwives to attend to them during child birth.
For the women in Mbaraara, there was a ray of hope when Uganda Telecom and the Rotaract Club refurbished the maternity ward at Mbaraara Health Center and donated medical equipment to fight against maternal and new born death in the village.
The telecom company donated two delivery beds, two post natal or resting beds, delivery sets, ward screens, ambulance bags, weighing scales, sterilizers, chairs, plastic-usable, hospital benches, mattresses, blood pressure aneroid adult and child cuff, theater boots and mosquito nets.
"This is going to help us, we have been going to Hoima town to delivery and you can imagine the distance on that bad road when you are in labor pain," Kobusingye said in an interview during a one day clinic camp.
Last week Uganda Telecom and its partners visited the village where the telecom company launched its U-Can Initiative that will go a long way in improving the lives of mothers in Uganda.
The firm also delivered books to benefit Mbaraara Primary Schools in an effort to improve the learning abilities of children in the remote village. Emmanuel Odra, the area local council one chairperson said the lack of a midwife in the village has been a huge challenge that resulted into three dead mothers who were giving birth last year because they couldnot afford to raise transport to the district's referral hospital.
Odra explained that to hire a vehicle to transport a woman in labor to Hoima town (3oKms from the village) one has to pay Ush100, 000 ($39) while it costs Ush50, 000 ($19) for a mother in labor to be transported on a motorcycle to the same destination.
"It is very expensive to go to Hoima and most mothers cannot afford it. Now that the village health center has been restocked, we are happy that we can get help here which is near us," stated Immaculate Arinaitwe, a mother of two.
Like Kobusigye, Arinaitwe also endured the gruesome drive to Hoima Referral Hospital to deliver her two children.
Naidu Shailendra, Uganda Telecom's Chief Commercial Officer noted that promoting good health in communities is U-Can Initiative's core areas of focus because healthy lives lead to a healthy economy.
"It is our hope that our support will go a long way in saving many newborns in Hoima District and Uganda at large," Shailendra said.
According to the 2013 State of the World Mothers' Report, in Uganda, 6,000 mothers die every year during pregnancy and child birth making the country one of the 50 worst places to be born in the world.
The findings further reveal that up to 15,100 babies die on the first day of birth in Uganda compared to 3,400 in Rwanda - the best place to be born in East Africa. In addition, up to 42,700 babies die in their first month of birth in Uganda compared to 9,500 in Rwanda. Arthur Ssewava, the President Rotaract Club explained that cost-effective services improve women's overall health and nutrition, to make childbirth safer.
Ssewava was optimistic that mothers and entire community will care for the equipment by valuing them because it's for their own benefit.
