CSOs call for action on family planning targets

A group of civil society organisations have urged the government to implement the sustainable development goals (SDGs) to ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive healthcare services, including for family planning by 2030.

In 2017, Uganda became signatory to the Family Planning 2020, which is now Family Planning 2030 (FP2030).

“Youths are the bigger population in this country but are also the most underserved in terms of family planning, a bigger percentage of the unmet needs are by adolescents and youth,” Dr Peter Idembe, the director programmes at Reproductive Health Uganda, said during a workshop in Kampala last Friday.

The meeting organised under the theme ‘Empowering youth for the Uganda FP2030 Agenda’ , saw several youth, and reproductive health organisations begin the dissemination process.

“For the  implementation to be effective, the dissemination of these commitments has to begin with the youths in rural centres,” Dr Idembe said.

“We should ensure that all youth be helped and once we are committed, these are the people we should focus on, the vulnerable, hard-to-reach, and the underserved,” he added.

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Dr Dinah Nakiganda, a Health ministry official, said government targets to reduce population growth from 3.2 percent to 2.4 percent.

“One of the goals in this meeting is to [create] an implementation plan that will be forwarded to the Ministry of Health on how we shall put the FP2030 Uganda commitments into action. We also need to develop a road map on how to hold our government accountable,” Dr Nakiganda said.

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She added: “These commitments prioritise adolescents because we know our population is mainly composed of the youth.”

Ms Betty Kyadondo, the director of family planning at the National Population Council, said government had made commitments to increase the modern contraceptive prevalence rate for all women from 30.4 percent to 39.6 percent in 2025.

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She also proposed that annually government should ring-fence 50 percent of the domestic resources to family planning procurement, and warehousing, among others.

2030 family planning commitments

-To increase equitable access and voluntary use of modern contraceptive methods for all women and couples
-To increase funding for adolescent sexual and reproductive health programmes
-Address family planning myths and misconceptions through evidence-based sexual and behavioural change communication
-To ensure contraceptive commodity security
-Strengthen the policy and enabling environment for family planning
-To strengthen family planning data use at all levels.

Govt roots for digitalised data for children

The Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development, has called for increased digital data capture of children to build and maintain a strong evidence base that it can use for planning and monitoring.

The ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Mr Aggrey Kibenge, made the call while receiving a new computer server from United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Kampala last Friday to support government’s work in tracking and monitoring interventions.

“One of the key strategies under systems strengthening is to promote evidence-based planning and programming for children which the ministry seeks to implement through the update and upgrade of the Orphans and Vulnerable

Children Management Information System (OVC MIS) to a comprehensive child wellbeing information system to improve access to quality data,” Mr Kibenge said.

Mr Richard Nelson, the USAID Mission director in Uganda, said such facilities help ministries be more effective in their work, including data collection  and  managment. 

More than 350,000 vulnerable children will be tracked through the computer server- Additional reporting by Esther Oluka