Namirembe: Eyes on Women

Namirembe: Eyes on Women in Africa’s Great Lakes region is an AfricaConnections blog looking at issues affecting the security of women in the DR Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, and southern Sudan.

August 15th.

Ugandans Abroad was excited by the reporting Daily Monitor journalists have been doing on maternal health in Uganda, which was the theme of the African Union summit last July.  Although the terrorist attacks on 7-11 overshadowed discussion of maternal health during the summit, death during pregnancy continues to terrorize mothers in Uganda.

According to reporting by Evelyn Lirri, an average of sixteen Ugandan women die daily from pregnancy and childbirth-related complications.  Although women are supposed to access free maternal health through the public sector, mothers are asked to pay for their transportation to health centres, gloves, razor blades, cotton wool and sheets.  To see a healthcare worker, pregnant mothers must often nagivate poor roads on boda-bodas, a cost they can’t always raise.

An estimated 16 women die daily in Uganda from childbirth-related complications. A picture of two girls in Busia. Lydia Feinstein.

There are only five years left to reach the eight Millennium Development Goals, a blueprint agreed in 2000 by world leaders to reduce extreme poverty and other targets.  Although all of the goals benefit mothers and girls, the third goal specifically was to eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary school by 2005, and all levels of education by 2015.  The fifth goal is to improve maternal health, particularly in southern Asia and sub-saharan Africa, by reducing maternal mortality and achieve universal access to reproductive health.

The East African reported today that an estimated $32 billion is needed for most African countries to achieve MDG goals for maternal health and cutting the number of deaths of children under five.  Last April, U.N. Secretary General Ban ki-Moon announced a Joint Action Plan to boost efforts to protect women and children’s health, and this plan will be reviewed at the MDG Summit in September.

Ingrid Turinawe, head of the FDC Women League.

July 31st.

Ugandan women continue to demonstrate for a change in leadership in the Electoral Commission, which the opposition argues is biased towards the current regime. On Friday, more than 30 women from opposition coalition Inter-Party Cooperation (IPC) protested at the State House in Nakasero, placing flyers with slogans against the Electoral Commission head, Badru Kiggundu, and chanting anti-Kiggundu and anti-Museveni slogans, according to reporting by the Daily Monitor.

Ingrid Turinawe, chairperson of the FDC Women league, led the group.  Earlier this week, on Tuesday, IPC women held anti-Electoral Commission demonstrations across the country, and 62 were arrested for unlawful assembly.  60 were released last Wednesday on police bond.

July 28th.

Motherhood nonprofit White Ribbon Alliance ran an advertising campaign during the summit urging African leaders to invest in mothers by increasing public health spending.

The African Union summit wrapped up on Monday.  Although the 7-11 al-Shabaab bombing and security issues largely overshadowed the summit (Uganda and Burundi have a peacekeeping mission in Somalia, linked to al-Shabaab’s desire to bomb Kampala), the theme of the summit was maternal, infant and child health.

In Uganda, 435 women die on average every 100,000 births, and 76 in every 1,000 children die before their fifth birthdays. Women activists at the summit called for leaders to provide free childbirth healthcare services across the continent.

The African Union agreed to form a group to monitor maternal, infant and child health.  ”If we improve the welfare of women, access to food and health care, maternal mortality will significantly reduce,” said summit chairman and Malawi president Bingu Wa Mutharika.  However, many African countries have failed to keep their public health promises.  According to reporting by The Daily Nation, only six countries have invested 15 percent of their budgets on healthcare, despite promises made nine years ago by African Union members (Rwanda, Botswana, Niger, Malawi, Zambia, and Burkina Faso).  With insecurity in Somalia dominating the discussion at the summit, the constant risks African women face when it comes to their health and their children’s health look likely to continue.