Tonight in Kampala

Christy and Erin hit the road (or, should we say “air?”) this weekend, traveling to Uganda to visit friends and colleagues who are working on reducing maternal mortality and to check in on the recipients of our grant to provide transportation vouchers for pregnant women. They’ll be sending blogs to keep us posted on what they’re doing, how your donations are being spent and what else needs to be done.  Here’s Erin’s post from her first evening in Kampala where she reconnected with old friends from the White Ribbon Alliance.  The White Ribbon Alliance is a global network of maternal health advocates campaigning for more resources and the right policies to prevent the needless deaths of women.

Erin’s blog:

After a long day of travel, meetings and a bit of jet leg, we’re back in our hotel rooms, having just returned from a fantastic dinner meeting with Robin and Samuel from the White Ribbon Alliance (WRA) of Uganda.  We had a wonderful talk about the landscape of maternal health in Uganda and what efforts are underway. The lessons learned here aren't just important for Uganda's maternal health but rather the hope is that these efforts will stand as an example to what needs to happen wherever women face barriers that prevent them from getting the healthcare they need.  

WRA is a global alliance of advocates working in countries around the world to strengthen support for maternal health. They’re  key partners to EMC because we all recognize that in the long run, what’s most important is for every country around the world to recognize the importance of maternal health and fund it within their own budgets. That's not to say assistance won't continue to be critical for the interim, but the work has to start now to at least begin to build that support. Over dinner, Robin and Samuel shared that the WRA-Uganda team's primary focus is to encourage the hiring of more health care workers and to advocate for the national budget to sustain these sorts of investments. Thanks to efforts from WRA-Uganda and others, the government just recently announced a commitment to add 6300 health workers to the system starting in January. This is going to make a huge difference here and WRA is now focused on keeping the pressure on to ensure those workers are in fact hired and retained.  It’s this kind of commitment and investment that’s critical to making all our efforts in Uganda successful.