Orombi to men: Stick to one wife

Kampala.

Retired Archbishop of Uganda Henry Luke Orombi has asked government to promote monogamy as a strategy of controlling the high population growth, which has led to high dependency rate and maternal mortality in Uganda.
Rtd Archibishop Orombi argued that a relationship, where a man marries one wife or engages in a sexual relationship with one partner makes it easy for him to stand by his woman during pregnancy to ensure safe delivery as opposed to polygamy.
“Preach the importance of treasuring women...we must stand by her in her role (of procreation) as a woman,” he said adding that “promote monogamy to reduce high population and maternal mortality.”
The former archbishop was last Friday speaking at an event organised to celebrate 10 years of Save the Mothers (STM) East Africa, a non-governmental organisation, aimed at improving the health of mothers and babies.
Save the Mothers is based at the Anglican founded Uganda Christian University (UCU) in Mukono.

Statistics
Maternal mortality rate in Uganda is still high at 368 deaths per 100, 000 live births according to the 2016 Uganda Health Demographic and Health Survey.
On the other hand, Uganda’s current population growth rate per year is 3.03 per cent, according to the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS).
To achieve their main objective of preventing the death of mothers and babies during pregnancy, delivery and shortly after birth, Dr Miriam Mutabazi, the East African director of Save the Mothers, said the organisation reaches out to other sectors beyond the medical profession through the Masters of Public Health and Leadership (MPHL) programme.
“The idea is to get a set of the community members that are influential and give them critical information to talk about better health for mothers. So, we link them to hospitals either as influencers at community level or hospital level,” Dr Mutabazi explained. Dr Jotham Musinguzi, the regional director of Partners in Population and Development (PPD), said Uganda’s population which is expected to hit 40 million in September up from 37.7million is not the problem but rather the growth pyramid.
He said with half of the population below 15 years, the dependency level is very high which compromises the provision of quality social services including maternal health.
PPD is an intergovernmental initiative created specifically for the purpose of expanding and improving South-to-South collaboration in the fields of reproductive health, population, and development.