Ambassadors for Improved Maternal Health

As well as directly engaging 1508 women during the second phase of this project, 548 women were involved in phase one. Because of the innovative combination of face-to-face community engagement and radio shows, the project was able to reach an audience of more than 100,000.

Key stakeholders included:

• Adolescent girls and young women aged 15 to 25 years
• Traditional birth attendants
• Health workers
• Local leaders including council, cultural, and religious leaders
• Justice actors and police officers

As an ambassador, I learnt that when a women or child is raped, the first thing is to take them to the hospital to get medicine called PEP within 72 hours such that even if the person who raped that girl is HIV positive, the child will remain safe provided that medicine is given within those 72 hours or 3 days.

Woman ambassador from Kyezimbira sub county. 

Harm reduction is one thing I really appreciated and how to use it in my day today work here at the hospital. Some women come with many problems for example, the women are young, she has a one-year-old baby, she is pregnant and HIV positive! These are many health issues, before, I would first ask them so many things such as why are you not using family planning? Why did you get married at that age? At time I would not want to help some women because they I thought they were just negligent about their life. After learning about their rights and the principles on harm reduction, I learnt not to judge or discriminate women but to focus on addressing their health needs.

Health worker at Mugarama Health Centre III 

My name is WK* from Mugarama church of Uganda, I want to thank Rural Aid Foundation because they came to our sub county and held suessions raising awareness of sexual violence, how to prevent unsafe abortions, and testing for HIV and we have realized that Rural Aid Foundation is helping us as community leaders because they are doing part of our work to ensure women and girls remain healthy. Rural Aid Foundation brought health services closer through the health camps. Thank you.

* Names have been adjusted to protect participant's privacy

My name is AB*, the local council one chairperson of Mugarama village and I am a member of the health unit management committee for Mugarama health center III. Rural Aid recruited and trained 80 adolescent women and girls and trained them on HIV prevention, sexual violence, rape and how to identify an report some of these case. After training them, they were supported to go to their villages to sensitize our people and also identify some of these cases. So far, we I have received a number of sexual and domestic violence cases that  I have handled and resolved while others have been sent to police and CDO’s office (Community Development officer). The number of cases has reduced in my village.  I am happy that the girl the girls that were trained are supporting women in the community as you can see may women are now turning up to receive health care services. This was not the case previously.