UGANDA’S FIRST NATIONAL MATERNAL-NEWBORN HEALTH
CONFERENCE
Theme: Moving From Policy to Practice: Saving Mothers and Newborns
at the Local and National Level.
Date: 15th-17th, June 2015
Venue: Serena Hotel,
Kampala, Uganda
Background
U
ganda, like most Sub-Saharan African countries, is struggling to save its mothers and newborns,
although it has made good progress for reducing child deaths. In Uganda, 34% of the 101,600
children who die before the age of five each year are newborns, dying in the first 28 days of life, often
at home and mostly of preventable or treatable causes.
Despite notable progress in reducing neonatal mortality since 2000 and a supportive policy environment, the country is not on track to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) 4 and 5,
related to child and maternal survival. Critical to Uganda is the existing policy-to-implementation gap,
especially effective implementation of maternal and newborn interventions at scale, mostly through
hospitals and district health systems.
As we come to the end of the MDG era, the world and Africa have developed new strategies and
plans, which have even more ambitious targets. These targets were adopted and endorsed with the
passage of the Every Newborn Action Plan (ENAP) in May 2014 at the World Health Assembly. In
addition, the global Ending Preventable Maternal Deaths and Disability plan is being completed. These
global targets have been incorporated into the Uganda Reproductive Maternal, Newborn and Child
Health Sharpened Plan, which, like the global plans, is very ambitious. To operationalize the plan,
national leadership, capacity, resources, and implementation is needed. Achieving these targets in
Uganda will require implementing plans that are driven by evidence. It is clear that specific
evidence within local contexts is needed to drive policy and programs in Uganda to help
improve the quality of care for mothers and newborns at the local level.
To address these gaps, Makerere University College of Health Sciences, School of Public Health with
support from partners is organising a national Maternal and Newborn Conference.
Overall Goal:
The goal of this conference is to identify key steps required to make progress towards Uganda’s
maternal and newborn health targets. This conference will feed into the Global Maternal Newborn
Health Conference in October 2015 by focusing on country level actions and efforts towards
accelerating and sustaining progress to improving maternal and newborn health (MNH) in Uganda.
Critical areas of focus include: Championing MNH, linkages to the post-2015 era, linkages to the
country ENAP translation and actions, and translating global research and advocacy into action to
support implementation of national policies and guidelines.
Specific Objectives:
1.To review progress for maternal and newborn health in Uganda including epidemiology and
evidence, and implementation plans and strategies.
2. To provide updates and contextualize the post-MDG agenda for maternal and newborn health in
Uganda
a) Evidence-based newborn health interventions
b) Updated global and national guidelines for specific interventions, such as newborn resuscitation
and postnatal care.
c) Targets and implications for Uganda
3. To share lessons learned in implementing maternal and newborn health policies and programs in
Uganda and identify key drivers to and barriers against progress towards high coverage of quality,
effective interventions : including health system strengthening and partnership coordination.
4. To identify context-specific research priorities and establish a plan to fill these gaps in with evidence and other innovative solutions in Uganda, with a special focus on identifying areas of greatest
need
Target audience:
The target audience will include researchers, policy makers, implementers, African regional and global experts.
A call for abstracts is coming soon. For more inquiries, contact us on
[email protected]
For more information on newborn health in Uganda, please visit:
•The Center of Excellence for Maternal and Newborn Health Research
at the Makerere University School of Public Health (mnh.musph.ac.ug)
•The Healthy Newborn Network – Uganda Country Page: www.healthynewbornnetwork.org/country/uganda
Contact: Dr. Peter Waiswa- ([email protected])
or
Eve Mashoo-([email protected])