Marie Stopes Uganda joined the rest of the world to commemorate #WorldContraceptionDay. The event, which is marked every 26th of September, was held in Hoima District, Bunyoro sub-region – the leading teenage pregnancy hotspot in Uganda.
The key objective of the conference was to provide a platform for intergenerational dialogue between young people, local leaders (religious, cultural & political), and other stakeholders to discuss various ways we can improve access to SRHR information & services for young people.
Uganda has one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates (25%) in sub-Saharan Africa. 46% of births by teenagers were unintended pregnancies. Teenage pregnancy contributes to 20% of Infant deaths in Uganda and furthermore to 28% of maternal deaths. If no action is taken, about 64% of teenage mothers will not complete their primary education level.
While speaking at the conference, Dr Ritah Tweheyo the Senior Programs Manager at Marie Stopes Uganda highlighted that a healthy, vibrant, and productive population now relies on our children. She added that we need to ensure that we support them through school, mentorship, and skills development, and commit to ending child marriages.
Marie Stopes has made a lifelong commitment to:
1. Conduct comprehensive mentorship for health workers. We have been able to support 717 health workers and 308 public health facilities.
2. Provide family planning voucher services to vulnerable communities through 114 private clinics. So far, over 300,000 vouchers have been redeemed to access free or subsidized family planning services.
3. Work every day at health centre IIIs & IIs through 19 outreach teams.
4. Work with village health teams to help create social behavioural change and demand for family planning services among other initiatives.
So far, Marie Stopes Uganda has been able to serve over 1.4 million people with FP services since 2019 on the RISE program, with support from UKAID.
The support for social behavioural change starts with you. What are you committing to do to address these issues in your community?
