Caterham Overseas Aid Trust

Work that VSO is doing in Uganda in maternal and newborn health

• During the first quarter (April – June 2021) VSO Uganda collaborated with the Moroto district health team and health facility staff to conduct peer educaors’ meetings in three supported health centres. This was designed to build the capacity of peer educators on maternal and newborn health and sexual reproductive health so that they would be able to refer mothers, children, and adolescents to the health facility for services.
• The second purpose of the meetings was to identify challenges affecting accessibility and utilization of maternal and newborn health services in the community and therefore working collaboratively towards the solutions. These meetings were facilitated by the in charges, midwives/ health assistants with the support of the community health volunteer. Meanwhile the District Health Teams (DHTs) from district health office (DHO) and health sub district supervised the reviews to ensure quality engagement in accordance with Ministry of Health Uganda guidelines.

Positive change and outcomes are being seen for primary actors

• The community dialogues resulted in generating collective action plans and solutions in hard-to-reach communities with pregnant and lactating mothers, new-borns, and older children, as well as adolescents receiving health services.

How your support can help us with the ongoing challenges in Uganda

During this last quarter, VSO Uganda strategically opted to implement the Make Way project in Gulu and Moroto where the organisation has had long term investments in terms of maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health. The Make Way project will employ a rights-based approach and therefore focusing primarily on advocacy and consistently employing the intersectionality approach. In this way, the collaboration between the Make Way project and the health supported grant will ensure that no one is left behind, tackling all aspects of multiple vulnerabilities.

Although the Make Way project is in a planning phase, we have already laid down the foundation, having identified gaps in terms of policy gaps, negative societal views, and lack of youth voice.