Maternal and child health care a huge challenge

By John W. Bahana

The statistics are frightening. At 30% Kigezi region, has the lowest hospital deliveries in Uganda. 

Seventy percent who deliver at home are at high risk of pregnancy related complications, infections and death. Sixteen mothers die every day due to these complications.

Further, the region posts 20% of its infant population as suffering severe malnutrition with rural Kabale alone registering 45%. One in every seven children does not survive his/her first birthday. 

Determined that this state of affairs cannot be allowed to continue, a Ugandan doctor is leading a novel strategy to ensure safe motherhood for Ugandan women, starting at a small unheralded clinic at Kirigime, Kabale Municipality. 

From this small health centre, Dr Geoffrey Anguyo, far from his native West Nile, started the Kigezi Health Education Foundation (KIHEFO). Here he is working wonders and very soon may surpass the good deeds of another indomitable Munyakigezi, the late Dr Leonard Sharp. 

In 1921, an English missionary called Dr Leonard Sharp came to Kigezi, then considered one of the remotest parts of Uganda and 10 years later established a leprosy treatment centre on the then uninhabited island of Bwama.

Dr Sharp brought happiness to thousands of Ugandan, Kenyans and others from the region who had been afflicted by leprosy, disfiguring them and leaving them at the mercy of severe stigma. In a similar time scale, Dr Anguyo has, in the 10 years since his arrival in Kabale, founded KIHEFO, a trailblaser of sorts. 

This is not a rebuke to the hundreds of well qualified medical personnel hailing from Kigezi who may have been better placed to do what Dr Anguyo, and Drs Sharp and Smith before him, did and are doing but a pointer to them do more.

At a recent fundraising function, Dr Anguyo and his KIHEFO team unveiled a novelty in fundraising that I want to share here. First, he brought in the mother of Banyakigezi, Mama Mbire, as ambassador extrordiniare for KIHEFO, a stroke of genius. 

She has pledged to visit corporate offices in Kampala to raise funds and awareness in support of safe motherhood. With her royal gait, Mama Mbire will stroll into your office and your corporate social responsibility manager will not be able to resist making a contribution to this cause. 

KIHEFO has partnered with Uganda’s mobile networks to make it possible for a contributor to simply make a telephone call on a designated number 090290811 and automatically, the caller will have contributed sh1,000 per call. 

He can also send an SMS to 6669 thus contributing sh600 per message, amounts reasonable even to the average Ugandan. Dr Anguyo’s team has got it nicely tailored. 

No longer will a potential contributor feel embarrassed by the size of his or her pockets. The Kigezi community, to which KIHEFO aims at making a difference, has come in full force to rally around Dr Anguyo’s patriotic cause.

The International Community of Banyakigezi (ICOB) with chapters around the world that focus on cultural and developmental interests of Ugandans in the Diaspora who hail from Kigezi and their friends, will do all it can to work with KIHEFO. 

It is no coincidence that ICOB-Uganda has maternal and child health care as its flagship. ICOB has modestly supported the School of Comprehensive Nursing and Midwifery, Kabale, the School of Nursing at Nyakibale and, will soon extend similar assistance to Mutolere and Kisizi schools of nursing. 

The Kabale ICOB Convention of 2011 tasked the executive to form a strategic leadership committee that will spearhead community health strengthening through additional funding support for welfare of health workers; improvement of health infrastructure and strengthening health financing through community initiatives.

Working with KIHEFO, foreign visiting doctors will be coming to Kigezi region on a more regular basis. Dr Anguyo has already brought in more than 30 doctors this year alone and numbers will be increasing steadily as ICOB uses its network of Banyakigezi in Diaspora. 

We are also working with Banyakigezi both here in Uganda and abroad, who have underutilised houses in their villages to offer abode to our visiting foreign doctors for the period of stay while they offer voluntary work in their home area. 

We can only see this fantastic initiative by KIHEFO and close collaboration in ICOB networks taking root in the whole country. If this is done, Uganda will no longer be a scary country for our mothers.

So call 090290811 to make a difference in our mothers’ lives.