We are working with the Government of Uganda through the Ministry of Health to increase the capacity of community and frontline health workers to deliver high-quality primary health services and reduce the preventable disease burden in the rural communities.
Uganda has made significant progress reducing maternal mortality and under-five mortality. However, challenges remain tied to the availability, accessibility, and affordability of essential health services. This contributes to 75% of Uganda’s preventable disease burden. With a population of approximately 43 million people, Uganda faces a significant health worker shortage to address these challenges.
76%
46 per 1,000 live births
375 per 100,000 live births
55%
5.8%
0.2 doctors per 1,000 people
*Source: The World Bank Group, World Bank Open Data, www.data.worldbank.org; Uganda Demographic and Health Survey, 2016, https://dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/FR333/FR333.pdf
To advance universal health coverage, which is the primary objective of the government’s latest National Health Sector Development Plan, Uganda is committed to increasing the capacity of its community-based health workforce.
We are partnering with the Uganda Ministry of Health to train community and frontline health workers to safely respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and provide home-based care using a blended learning approach, which includes digital tools and in-person training.
We are supporting the Uganda Ministry of Health to:
We supported the Ministry of Health to train over 3,000 master trainers and supervisors through a multi-day virtual training focused on COVID-19 vaccine administration. These trainers in turn trained 5,000 frontline health workers and district leaders across 146 districts. In addition, we are distributing personal protective equipment to 2,500 community and frontline health workers across two rural districts so they can safely continue providing, COVID 19 treatment, essential health services and home-based care support.
Through our Community Health Academy, we will provide blended learning opportunities for health leaders to grow their expertise to effectively manage community health systems. We will also establish a community of practice to enhance knowledge exchange and ongoing professional development for health leaders.
We supported the Ministry of Health to design and launch the Capacity Building App to equip community and frontline health workers with up-to-date training and education materials on safely responding to COVID-19. We will continue to collect and analyze user data from the app to inform future content development, which aligns with the Ministry’s priority to leverage digital tools to improve health worker training across the country during the pandemic.
