By Kemuel Othieno
In the early 2000s, Uganda had one of the highest maternal mortality rates in Sub-Saharan Africa. A Ministry of Health report from 2022 shows that the maternal mortality rate in Uganda in the early 2000s was about 400 deaths/100,000 live births per annum. Pregnancy posed an existential threat to women and their babies. At around the same time too, with increased attention on the matter, efforts were being made to stem the death toll. One such programme, Save the Mothers (STM), is today housed at Uganda Christian University’s Mukono Campus.
The organisation was founded by a team of Ugandan and International Obstetricians hoping to bring attention to the maternal health crisis in Uganda. One of its main goals was to equip multi-disciplinary professionals with the skills to bring an end to suffering in their communities. Various members of the staff at STM and a few alumni spoke to The Standard about where it started and how far it has come.
The Executive Director, Dr Mushin Nsubuga, shared that everyone in a society has a role to play in bringing an end to maternal deaths. “From the start that’s what we have been about. It’s not only up to doctors. Journalists must be educated on the matter so that they can inform the public, engineers must be educated so that they can incorporate the needs of mothers into their planning,” he said.
When STM was started in 2005, its flagship Masters in Public Health Leadership (MPHL) programme had only recently been formed. The inspiration for the programme came from UCU’s Masters in Counselling programme at the time, which held brief but intense modules for about two to three weeks. This model allowed the people who took part in the programme to maintain their jobs while studying. The faculty at STM consisted of veterans from various fields both from Uganda and from foreign countries.
STM went about recruiting to the programme as they had intended – doctors, nurses, journalists and administrators have been a part of the MPHL programme. Dr Mushin is immensely proud of the alumni. “Our biggest achievement is the alumni. So many people have gone through the programme and gone on to do important work,” he said.
Save the Mothers recently had the privilege of being the featured organisation at the Ministry of Health’s National Safe Motherhood Conference. Various alumni and affiliates of the organisation presented and Dr Chamberlain-Froese delivered the keynote address. She first came to Uganda in 1998 as part of a delegation from Canada sent to Uganda by the International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics. This team worked with Ugandan ObGyns to tackle the various challenges facing the country’s maternal health sector.
They initially worked in Kiboga, a town along the Kampala-Hoima road. Speaking to The Standard about this early experience in Uganda and also about the early days of STM, Dr Chamberlain-Froese says then, the team realised that their work could not be confined to the hospital. Often, mothers were coming in too late to receive any help.
The doctors found that there was a need to go out into the communities to help their patients. A big initiative at the time was focused on traditional birth attendants who most mothers in the area relied on for medical assistance during the pregnancy and eventually aided when it was time for delivery. She vividly recalls a visit from the Member of Parliament at the time. The MP seemed to care little about the plight of mothers in the area and about the progress the team was making. “She spent like a few seconds with us before leaving,” Dr Chamberlain-Froese said. It spoke to an indifference in the attitudes of most people about the fates of mothers and children in Uganda.
She spent two years in Kiboga before leaving to do similar work in Yemen. However, Uganda, and the work that remained undone here, was on her mind. She kept in touch with members of her old team based in Uganda and tried to come up with a few ways to improve the situation in the country.
The answer was Save the Mothers. In her speech at the 2024 National Safe Motherhood Conference, Dr Chamberlain-Froese said that most efforts at communication on maternal health were targeted towards adults. Speaking on the importance of individuals, she noted that adolescents are a large part of Uganda’s population and are often most likely affected by the issues STM seeks to solve. For messaging to ignore them is a huge disservice.
There are three delays that Save the Mothers often talks about when it comes to maternal deaths, and they’re heartbreaking to hear about. First is the delay in seeking help — so many mothers don’t even know their options or what they need, and that ignorance can lead to horrible outcomes. The second delay is all about infrastructure — poor roads, no transport — so women in labour scramble to get to a hospital on the back of a motorcycle in the middle of the night. Thirdly is the nightmare at the health facility itself. No drugs, no electricity, no care — just patients left waiting, bleeding, dying in a place that’s meant to save them. By the time they get to that point, as STM always says, the first two delays have already set them up for tragedy.
In her speech at the conference, Dr Chamberlain-Froese shared her optimism that the Mother-Baby Hospital Friendly Initiative, which allows the organisation to pair with hospitals and equip them to offer safe, respectful and dignified deliveries, would continue to grow over the years. Dr Nsubuga believes that this will be the track that Save The Mothers stays on. He also hopes to recruit even more students to the Masters’ in Public Health Communication. “I’d love to see more young people get involved; this is their fight.”
