Since 2015, we have partnered with the Rakai and Kyotera districts to increase access to quality health services at all 59 government health facilities in the districts and the 600,000 people they serve.
HOW IT IS GOING
Our solution builds capacity in the government health system through health education and promotion in the community, mentoring and training of health providers, addressing supply chain bottlenecks of life-saving blood, medicines, and equipment, and sustaining an integrated health data system that supports timely decision making.
Our approach has demonstrated its validity by reducing IMMR by 74% and perinatal mortality by 44% in the two districts between 2015 and 2022. Among the key achievements that have contributed to these impacts, we have raised the percentage of women who deliver their babies in health facilities with professional birth attendants from 42% to 71.4%. In communities served by our Mama Rescue Project, 94.4% of women have access to skilled attendance at delivery, which is the key element to reducing maternal and perinatal mortality.
We have made dramatic improvements in the quality of care at 48 government-funded health facilities, with Case Fatality Rates (CFRs) (the likelihood of a mother dying from a complication) falling 82% from 1.7% in 2015 to 0.3% in 2022. Through our Mama Rescue transportation program, which links women in labor to local motorcycle and automobile taxi drivers through a BAMA-designed mobile phone app, over the past two years we transported 27,000 women in labor from village to HC, and have reduced the time it takes to transfer a woman who develops life-threatening complications in labor from HC to hospital from 31⁄2 hours to 34 minutes (Please click here to watch the Mama Rescue Demonstration video by BAMA staff member Katharina Mueller).
BAMA has established three Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs) at government-funded hospitals, which have achieved a 97% survival rate for the 1,706 sick newborns under our care. Our peer-support parenting groups have improved early childhood development (ECD), maternal mental health, and family planning uptake compared to controls for 1,400 adolescent mothers. We have realized an 84% reduction in incidence of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) amongst adolescent mothers.
UNTIL TODAY WE HAVE
Reduced institutional maternal & perinatal mortality by 74% and 48%
since 2016
Saved 580+ lives
at a cost of $3,622 per life saved
Improved early childhood health development for
1,400+ children
Partnered up with
60 health facilities
Reduced referral time from health center to hospital from 3.5 hours to
34 minutes
Established 3 NICUs with
97% survival rate
It has always been our intention to expand our reach to other districts as our approach has been validated and resources become available.
We began preliminary work in two additional districts, Masaka and Masaka City, in 2022. Now, with the backing of the Ugandan Ministry of Health, we will implement our program in those and two additional districts, bringing the total to six. We will cover all nine districts of the Masaka Region by 2030. This transition to scale will improve access to quality maternal and newborn care, leading to better health outcomes for women and children in the entire Masaka Region of over 2.2 million people.
WHERE WE WILL BE