Govt urged to focus on children in remote areas

Josita Kabugho, a beneficiary of Save the Children project, speaks during the launch of the NGO’s Every Last Child campaign in Kampala last week. PHOTO BY RACHEL MABALA

What you need to know:

Effort needed. Ms Barbara Burroughs says despite significant efforts, Uganda still has a long way to go before all children in the country realise their rights to survival, learning and protection

Kampala.

Josita Kabugho was a school-going teenager with a dream to join secondary school. At 16, while in Primary Seven, she became pregnant.

Kabugho, who hails from Bupombari Parish in Bundibugyo District, had to drop out of school. The boy responsible for the pregnancy abandoned her.

Her ordeal is not different from what most children in remote communities across the country go through.

“I had a successful delivery. I was lucky that a few months after giving birth, I was absorbed into the Save the Children Youth in Action project and trained in business skills. In November 2015, I was given start-up capital of Shs300,000 by the Youth in Action project,” she says. Today, Kabugho is able to sustain herself and her child.

According to Ms Barbara Burroughs, the Country Director Save the Children–Uganda, despite significant efforts, Uganda still has a long way to go before all children in the country realise their rights to survival, learning and protection.

“These children are the most isolated, they live the furthest from health centres, they have the longest distance to travel to school, and are the most vulnerable. It is easy to forget them,” Ms Burroughs said while launching the NGO’s Every Last Child campaign in Kampala last week.
She called on government to act immediately saying there is no time left.

As such Save the Children through Every Last Child campaign recommends three action points.
Survival, where government considers local needs and challenges when allocating resources, learning, where government allocates education resources to non-formal schools and protection, where government develops a comprehensive and appropriately funded child protection strategy.

In a speech read for him by assistant commissioner child health, Ms Jesca Nsungwa Sabiiti, the Health minister, Dr Elioda Tumwesigye, said: “...As set out in the National Development Plan II, we will focus on mass management of malaria, the introduction of a National Health Insurance scheme and universal access to family planning services, among others.”

The programme
Every Last Child campaign calls on decision makers at the household, local, national and international levels to ensure that barriers that prevent the poorest children from accessing life-saving services are eliminated.