FAMILY PLANNING VOUCHERS PROJECT

Family planning is a project that is funded by Marie Stopes Uganda under the blue star health care network.

 Marie Stopes ED, Deepmala Mahla with Sumayiah Nakaziba of UDHA

UDHA works with community health workers (CHWs) in family planning who are selected from different communities where Map the community and divide work including visits to families, counseling, and referral. During door to door sensitization and mobilization, CHWs use different tools including flipcharts, models and samples of methods which are provided at our health facilities, after sensitization they sale vouchers at Ushs. 2,000 only to all their clients want and they are sent to Mercy Health Center for the family planning services of their choice.  The community based distributors report to UDHA about their work and challenges and after they send an SMS to Marie Stopes by sending their voucher numbers and initials to 8228.

After a few days they follow up on all the clients that they referred to the health facility after checking from the health facility registers whether they reached, when they get some who did not come, the CBDs goes back to their homes and find out why they did not services they are given more time because most of them need more counseling about family planning.

 

Through this program, community based distributors mobilize and talk to people in their homes thus creating a sense of care towards the community of which most of the community members respond positively to advice being given. 

 

Nutrition project

Annually, Globemed supports the Nutrition project initiated as a pilot in Naigobya parish in June 2009 and rolled out to the whole sub county in 2014 covering more five parishes of Bukyangwa, Bukooma, Nabyoto, Namansenda and Namulanda. In this project, UDHA is engaging communities of Bukooma sub County in Luuka district to address their own health and development challenges in a bid to reduce maternal and child morbidity and mortality arising from malnutrition. Many areas in rural Uganda, poor households grow most of their food on smallholdings due to land fragmentation in the habitable areas. UDHA promotes adoption of better nutrition practices by parents and guardians to avert the effects of malnutrition on children and pregnant mothers.

UDHA together with communities identified and trained Community Health Workers (CHWs). The CHWs conduct; mobilization and dialogues on community health challenges,  registration, growth monitoring, nutrition counseling and referral of children below 5 years and pregnant mothers; continued interaction with parents and guardians to support their daily nutrition choices; utilizing social and health promotion events to conduct on-site food demonstrations using locally available food resources to teach parents prepare nutritious food. For increased adoption of better nutrition practices among the target population, CHWs also promote food hygiene and home gardening. Session build the capacity of parents to classify nutritious food resources for healthier meals and integrating the growing of staple food crops with other smaller gardens for the provision of sufficient sources of essential dietary nutrients needed by especially children below 5years and pregnant mothers.