SPEED’s contribution to Reproductive Maternal Newborn Child and Adolescent Health (RMNCA) Assembly and outcomes
Concerned about the slow progress in addressing the high Maternal and Infant mortality in Uganda and the need to work together in a coordinated and more accountable manner, Ministry of Health embarked on taking a common and well-coordinated country approach towards the efforts to accelerate the attainment of MDG 5 and sustaining the progress achieved in MDG 4.
Despite achieving the under-five mortality indicator (55/1000 live births) through improvement of Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health (RMNCAH) services, maternal and newborn indicators have remained relatively stagnant in the last decade. Currently, the Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) is 438/100,000 live births (UDHS2011) which translates into 20 women dying every day from preventable and treatable causes. These deaths can be avoided through the implementation of a package of lifesaving, low-cost interventions as spelt out in the RMNCAH Sharpened Plan (A Promise Renewed). However, implementations of these low cost, high impact interventions can only be successful if there is improved coordination and accountability amongst the RMNCAH stakeholders.
To realize this, Ministry of Health held a high level meeting with Development Partners who support RMNCAH in Uganda on 18th September 2014 at Serena Hotel. At this meeting, the country statistics on RMNCAH were discussed as well as the challenges hindering progress. Five resolutions were made out of the meeting to address the slow progress and ensure that all Partners move together in a more coordinated and streamlined manner so as to achieve the goal of ending preventable maternal and child deaths.
As a follow up on the above meetings’ resolutions, a Reproductive Maternal Newborn Child and Adolescent Health (RMNCAH) Assembly was convened on 10th December 2015 at Kampala Serena Hotel and Conference Centre with an aim of establishing a clear coordination and accountability mechanism that will reduce on duplications and ensure efficiency and effectiveness in RMNCAH service delivery by all stakeholder in Uganda.
The RMNCAH Assembly brought together both public and private RMNCAH stakeholders in Uganda and the First Lady of Uganda/Minister for Karamoja Affairs, Hon. Janet Kataha Museveni who is also the Champion of RMNCAH in Uganda officiated at the assembly.
The RMNCAH Assembly objectives were:
- To understand where the country is in relation to its RMNCAH agenda, and celebrate the progress made so far on ending preventable Child and Maternal deaths and rolling out the sharpened plan since the launch of the APR November 2013.
- To take stock of the progress by different partners and players to deliver their respective mandates; where partners are implementing, where the outstanding need lies in terms of coverage and financing gap, and decide on the way forward for 2016.
- To track RMNCAH resources in the country so as to generate high quality data/information for informed decisions-making during planning and resource allocation for equity.
- To share information on Global Financing Facility (GFF)—which aims to boost health systems and substantially increase resources spent on maternal and child health by diversifying financing for development.
Different presentations were made by all RMNCAH stakeholders. SPEED’s contribution to this process is around the implementation of the ‘promise renewed’ for Reproductive Maternal Newborn Child and Adolescent Health. For details on this refer to page 14 for Professor Freddie Ssengooba’s presentation.
Following the discussions of the presentations, the RMCNAH Stakeholders in Uganda committed themselves to several issues including; strengthening accountability systems, adhering to national guidelines in implementation of RMNCAH, working under the leadership and guidance of the Ministry of Health, advocating for increased budgetary allocation in line with 2001 Abuja declaration, among other key commitments.
The rest of the documentation of the Assembly proceedings can be accessed here…..
