By Brechtje van Lith, Country Director of Save the Children Uganda
On March 15, we woke up to some good news – the Uganda Bureau of Statistics had released the Uganda Demographic and Health Survey 2016, showing, among other things, that more women are giving birth in health facilities than ever before.
The survey revealed that three out of every four women (73%) deliver in a health facility. This is in contrast to the 2011 survey which showed that only about 57% of women delivered in health facilities and the rest gave birth at home.
The shift of births to facilities enables health workers to provide lifesaving services to women and their babies — a critical gap in Uganda where every day 16 women die from pregnancy and childbirth-related causes, 94 babies are stillborn and 81 babies die in the first month of life.