Uganda
Uganda is relatively stable after many years of conflict. Just over half the Ugandan population is aged under 18. Children are at risk from food shortages, and poor access to health and social services.
3 million: that’s how many of Uganda’s children we’ll save in the next few years.
In this east African country, with its history of poverty, devastating HIV rates, dictatorship and brutal conflict, achieving the Millennium Development Goals is ambitious – perhaps even out of reach.
But working with local groups to national ministries, we’re determined to get there.
"Every child in Uganda should be safe, educated and healthy." - Peter Nkhonjera, Uganda country director
Brenda, 19, is a peer educator: she talks to other young people about HIV and AIDS and teaches life skills to pupils in primary schools.
Key facts
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2.3 million children have lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS.
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Because of our Rewrite the Future projects, more than 1 million children have started school for the very first time.
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We’ll save the lives of 3 million children through our child survival campaign.
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In 2010 we reached 320,500 children and 149,000 adults.
The challenges
Uganda is a young country, with more than half the population under 18. It’s a tough place to grow up. Although child and maternal mortality figures are falling, they are still startlingly high – higher than in Malawi or Botswana.
2.3 million children are HIV/AIDS orphans. Many do not make it through school to grade 7. Reports of sexual and other abuse are rising. For young people, unemployment and the growing cost of living are huge obstacles, leading to unrest in the cities.
“The triggers are so simple. We need to address the fact that young people have no jobs and feel they have no future,” says Peter Nkhonjera, our country director in Uganda.
What we’ve achieved
Our experience shows that the best way to help Uganda’s children is to provide an integrated package that runs all the way from direct services on the ground to national policy change through government. Find out more.
Child survival
- The danger period is clear: from day 1 to day 28. In that first month, infants die quickly – and needlessly. We took our findings to the government and now our approach to newborn care is being rolled out by the Ministry of Health nationwide. Newborn health is now part of the government’s strategy for malaria, pneumonia and diarrhoea.
- In 2010, we equipped 300 health workers and 1,000 village health teams with the skills essential for newborn care – with two teams in every village where we work. In one area, the proportion of women giving birth in a health centre grew from just over half to three-quarters – a crucial indicator of survival for both mothers and their babies.
- At the Africa Union summit in Kampala, we helped persuade African leaders to agree to provide comprehensive, integrated maternal, newborn and child health services, to base their work on identified high-impact, cost-effective good practice, and to increase health spending.
Education
- More than 1 million children go to school, thanks to our Rewrite the Future projects. In 2010, 20,000 children started school for the first time.
- Now we’re focusing on improving the quality of education. Because of our advocacy, the government has taken important steps to establish and fund non-formal education programmes – an essential bridge to enable children to enter mainstream education. It’s giving two years training to nearly 600 teachers so they can work in non-formal schools, and expanding early childhood education.
- We’re building homes so that teachers can stay in remote and difficult-to-staff schools.
HIV/AIDS
- Brenda, pictured above, was born HIV-positive. But it’s not held her back. In 2005 she came to our partner, Health Alert, for counseling and support. Now she’s the chairperson of Young Positives, a group of HIV-positive young people who reach out to others. Brenda is one of tens of thousands of HIV-positive children and young people whom we’ve helped with therapeutic food, schooling, support and education.
What’s urgent now
We’re putting everything we’ve got into our campaign to save children’s lives so that Uganda has a chance of stopping needless child deaths by 2015. But time is short.
Give to our life-saving work today