Otushabire Tibyange
23 September 2008
The German government and the World Bank have launched a voucher card system aimed at helping expectant women and people with sexually transmitted diseases in western Uganda access treatment easily.
The three-year project supported by the Global Partnership on Output Partnership and to be implemented by Marie Stopes International, is targeting 110,000 expectant mothers and 35,000 STD cases.
Under the project, an expectant woman will pay Shs3,000 and the voucher will entitle her to four antenatal visits and one post-natal visit after six weeks of delivery.
For STD cases, a Shs3,000 voucher entitles two partners to treatment from selected service provider of their choice.
According to the outreach project coordinator, Mr Richard Ssemuju, the venture aims at reducing the number of mothers and babies dying or being disabled due to absence or under-utilisation of skilled medical attendance during pregnancy and child delivery.
He said a successful pilot project was carried out in 2006-7 in Mbarara, adding that whereas only 20,000 patients were targeted, 26,015 turned up.
"We were able to distribute 23,916 vouchers, other patients were treated without vouchers," he revealed.
Mr Ssemuju said safe delivery vouchers target poor women while STD vouchers target all sexually active people with particular emphasis on high risk groups and the poor.
Launching the project on September 18 in Mbarara, the State Minister for Health, Dr Richard Nduhuura, said the reproductive health sector was improving.
"For example, the number of women delivering under skilled attendance has increased from 37 per cent to 42 per cent, while antenatal care (4 visits) increased from 42 per cent to 47 per cent," he said.
"Adolescent pregnancy decreased from 32 per cent to 25 per cent. Similarly, infant mortality declined from 88 to 76/1000 live births. However, maternal mortality is still high and decreased from 505 to 435/100,000 live births; while total fertility is 6.7 and has not declined much."
The minister noted that globally about 500,000 people die from complications of pregnancy and childbirth every year.
"About 99 per cent of these cases happen in the developing countries," he added.
But Mr Ssemuju noted that the success of the project depends on the efficiency of service providers. "In the pilot project we started with 18 service providers but ended with 13 because some of them fell below the standards. We are very strict on quality service," he said.
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