Detailed description

A consortium of Rotary Clubs in the US and Uganda is teaming up to provide badly needed MCH equipment, support services, and clinical training to up to 63 public hospitals and maternity centres serving the poor in rural Uganda. These facilities provide the full range of women’s health services to more than 100,000 mothers annually, including antenatal, maternity, and postnatal care, C-sections, newborn care, and family planning counseling. To reach this group, Rotary will partner with Bulamu Healthcare, a US non-profit & Ugandan NGO that has MOUs in place to provide a full range of equipment and services to 12 partner districts in Uganda that operate 348 public health facilities treating 3.3 million patients each year. Bulamu and its Uganda Rotary partners have identified 6 districts of Uganda with particularly pressing needs in 5 areas. Rotary's support will fund vital MCH equipment and clinical training in newborn care for $200,000 total, leading to lower MCH mortality rates.

Community assessment: How the project team learned about the community’s needs

Working together, Rotary Clubs in Uganda, Bulamu and Uganda’s Ministry of Health conducted needs assessments in each district. This helped to understand the MCH problems this grant will address and confirm that the grant approach will address them. Everyone who interacts with the Ugandan public health system observes that its local Ministry of Health facilities are chronically short of essential medical equipment, medicines, and supplies. For example, operating rooms often run out of low-cost supplies such as sutures, and therefore offline 40-70% of the time (before our group's intervention). To give another example, simple clinical trainings on newborn care must be done regularly but have not been in these districts in years. Bulamu learned about these issues while extending its hospital/clinic management system across its 12 partner districts that operate 347 public health units. The partner clubs then confirmed by conducting their own needs assessments in the 6 partner districts.

Project impact: How the project will help the community after the project ends

The equipment and training provided by this grant will support facilities for long after the grant takes place for multiple reasons. The equipment provided will be selected for durability, and training and maintenance plans will ensure it is used for long-term results. The clinical training provided is essential to improve care for newborns to modern standards of care. This clinical training will be provided to develop local trainers in the 6 partner districts, so training will both work immediately and can be repeated as needed over time. Finally, Rotary leaders in Uganda and Bulamu will work with the Ministry of Health and districts to build ownership of the project and provide the necessary technical support to ensure it continues to work over time. This kind of long-term support is a key part of Bulamu's health systems program and one of the reasons this partnership was formed.

Sustainability: How the benefits of the project will continue afterward

We have started with a local problem and now engaged the nearby Rotary clubs to supervise the work in each of the 6 partner districts. This will further develop the local ownership which is already strong from letters of support that each District's Health Officer is providing. We will buy local and measure impact carefully to learn from it and deliver a project that can scale nationally if subsequent funding allows. Technically, the clinical training works for years for each clinician who participates, but in addition we will ensure local trainers are developed and able to provide trainings in their home districts indefinitely. The MCH equipment is generally durable and long-term in nature, and we will ensure local and Ministry of Health commitments occur and are followed through to support ongoing occasional needs for the equipment to work as long as possible.