Meet Three Ugandan Women Who Say Community-Based Family Planning Has Changed Their Lives

By Irene Mirembe, Knowledge management manager, IntraHealth InternationalDecember 07, 2020In rural Eastern Uganda, three young women between the ages of 19 and 24 are happy, healthy, and focused on achieving their dreams, thanks to community-based family planning providers.During the COVID-19 pandemic, IntraHealth International’sRegional Health Integration to Enhance Services in Eastern Uganda (RHITES-E) program has increased community-level interventions to improve family planning services and make them more accessible, while also emphasizing community participation, citizen accountability, reporting, and the importance of data. For young women like Nandutu Phiona, Betty Khaitsa, and Susan Neumbe, this expansion in their communities has made it easier to access high-quality family planning services.The 2016Uganda Demographic Health Survey (UDHS) reported that Uganda has a national total fertility rate (TFR) of 5.4—the average number of children a woman would have by the end of her childbearing years. In 12 of the 25 RHITESE-E districts in Eastern Uganda, the TFR rate was above seven and the unmet need for family planning was 28.7 percent.According to the Ministry of Local Government and Social& Scientific Systems (SSS) Inc., the unmet need for family planning rate in eastern Uganda has now dropped to 7.97% and the contraceptive prevalence rate is around 37 percent. And RHITES-E is making sure services are still available during COVID-19.Suzan Neumbe is 23 y...
Source: IntraHealth International - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Tags: Family Planning & Reproductive Health Community Engagement Source Type: news