Pregnant women protest poor maternity facilities

Jun 20, 2016

The small available room where mothers deliver from and are admitted offered no required privacy

Pregnant women have joined residents and local leaders of Mulagi sub-county in Kyankwanzi district to pile pressure on government for a standard maternity facility at their health center III. 

The weather-beaten locally contributed materials such as bricks, sand and stones in the compound of Nnalinya Ndagiire health center qualifies the residents' undoubted need for a maternity ward. 

Fed up of trekking more than 8km to Kiboga Hospital, in 1995, residents with the support from Irish Aid contributed materials like bricks, sand, stones among others and establish Nnalinya Ndagiire health centre III in 1997. 

The health centre serves over 10,000 people mainly from Mulagi and the surrounding sub-counties of Kitabona and Kibiga in Kiboga district. 

Scolah Nakate and Janet Namuga both pregnant mothers are among the residents who believe that the absence of a deserving maternity ward at the health centre is a disservice to mothers. 

They claim that the small available room where mothers deliver from and are admitted offered no required privacy and comfortability of a mother in the state of child birth. 

Bernard Henry Turinaye, a health worker, said, standards demand that a health centre III is equipped to safely deliver mothers. 

Turinaye said a maternity ward was of a paramount impotence to any mother in the state of child birth because it should have the at most privacy during labour pain and after delivery because of a lot that goes on in the process. 

He said that at a standard maternity ward midwife must be available all the time to give mothers confidence adding that short of this, a mother cannot give birth to a bouncing baby comfortably at a health facility. 

Leonard Kasirye, a member on the health center management committee said that in 2013 they started a community driven campaign to provide local materials for a possible funder to support them establish a maternity ward. 

He said they contributed 15000 bricks out of 25000 they required, 15 Lorries of sand and 10 trips of hard core. 

"World Vision had pledged to support us but we have since heard that the fund was suspended and our hope is all directed to government", he said. 

In their petition the residents delivered to Kyankwanzi district health officer, Dr. John Bosco Sserebe through an NGO called Action for Rural Women Empowerment (ARUWE) last week, they asked the district to come to their rescue. 

The country executive director of ARUWE, Suzeni Muwazi, said that the issue of a maternity ward came out outstanding in a community and health workers' scorecard prepared during trainings they had under a project dubbed "promoting community led advocacy for improved delivery of sexual reproductive health services". 

She said that the project with support from African Women's Development Fund (AWDF) intends to empower communities with knowledge, skills and mechanisms to advocate for improved quality, accessibility and availability of sexual reproductive services in Kyankwanzi district. 

Sserebe said a number of health centre IIIs such as Nalinya, Sirimula, Kiyuni, Butemba had no maternity wards and that as the district had no capacity to establish them because of limited funding. 

"For instance we get sh1.2m in three months to administer a health centre III but to have a fully functional maternity ward in place it requires over sh80m, where can we get such amount of money?", he asked. 

He added that they are engaging NGOs for possible support and that discussions were going on.

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