The Rotary Club of Kampala Wandegeya has launched a campaign dubbed ‘’Save a Mother’’, aimed at improving maternity health care as well as reducing the scourge of fistula in Uganda.

The campaign is based on statistics that 336 deaths continue to occur on average per 100,000 live births and about 2,000 new cases of fistula are registered in Uganda annually according to the UBOS Demographic and Health Survey 2016 and UNFP.

The Save a Mother campaign, focuses on building and equipping maternity and fistula wards in kaliro, in order to improve maternity health care as well as reducing the scourge of fistula in Uganda.

Speaking at the launch of the campaign at Kolping Hotel, the President Rotary club of Kampala Wandegeya Daniel Lubogo said that fistula is a devastating childbirth injury that has been relatively neglected, despite the impact it has on the lives of girls and women of reproductive age between 19-49 yrs.

He also noted that fistula has a negative impact to the country with over 140,000 to 200,000 women living with the vice, despite government efforts to improve maternal and child health services. Uganda currently ranks third in the countries with the greatest obstetric fistula cases in the world as per the World Health Organization (WHO) rankings”.

“The maternity ward will have four labor rooms which can accommodate at least 10 mothers at the same time. It will have one clinic examination room, one storage room for medical supplies and a refrigerator, which uses gas, and sterilization of equipment is done using a medical steam sterilizer. We hope that accessibility to the proposed maternity ward shall be very easy for the mothers because it is within a distance of only 10 metres from the hospital” said President Lubogo.

“On Average in a Quarter they have 3650 Out Patients, 369 inpatients at the maternity unit, a total of 21 children as inpatient on general ward, 222 females as in patients on general ward, 150 males as in patients on general Ward. 18 caesarian sections are always carried out quarterly, 8 herniorrhaphies, 3 Laparotomies and 12 other minor surgeries” the president further noted.

Bumanya Health Center IV has a problem of shortage of space at the maternity ward. It is supposed to cater for 6 inpatients at a time but it caters for over 20 mothers with even floor cases.

This problem leads to poor medical services rendered to the community, especially to the child-bearing mothers, which leads to poor childbirth and sometimes causes death to the child, mother, or both.

Medical experts have always expressed fears that the numbers of new fistula cases in the country could be more, since nobody has done epidemiological survey. There is need to come up with innovative ways to reach women in rural areas who might not know the existence of the condition despite having it.

The Rotary club of Kampala Wandegeya is now seeking potential partners to join the club in saving the mothers in Eastern Uganda.