RAISE Projects
With Marie Stopes Uganda (MSU), RAISE is helping expand access to comprehensive reproductive health services in four districts in war-torn northern Uganda.
On the ground
Most of Uganda has flourished over the last decade, but in northern Uganda hostilities between the government and the Lord's Resistance Army have threatened peace and security. Fighting besieged the north in 1986, and at its worst, forced 1.2 million people to flee their homes and livelihoods. Despite the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement signed in 2006, an estimated 625,000 people still cannot return home.
Access to medical services in northern Uganda, including reproductive health (RH) care, is extremely limited. Health facilities struggle to stock even the most basic family planning methods and few health workers are trained to provide them. Emergency care for life-threatening complications during pregnancy and delivery is only available at one facility in the region, the referral hospital. Many humanitarian organisations in the north provide basic health services but still overlook care for unsafe abortions, despite its well-known potential to save lives.
How RAISE is helping
Along with Canadian Physicians for Aid and Relief (CPAR), RAISE and MSU support four health centres run by the Ministry of Health in northern Uganda (specifically Amuru, Kitgum, Lira, and Pader Districts).
Marie Stopes Uganda Health Centre
Centres provide basic emergency obstetric care, including post-abortion care and care for survivors of sexual violence. Some centres send mobile health units to isolated, rural districts to deliver family planning to clients who would otherwise not have access.
MSU also collaborates with other humanitarian organisations in northern Uganda to make care available in displaced persons camps.
To ensure all components needed to deliver comprehensive RH care are in place, the project secures supplies and equipment and trains health workers at the RAISE Training Centre in Kenya and at home in Uganda.
The project also utilises radio, community health workers, theatre, and brochures to raise awareness amongst communities about RH and project services.
Country Context
- Women have an average of seven children, the third highest in Africa.
- Less than 10% of women living in displaced persons camps currently use a modern method of family planning.
- Only one third of women in northern Uganda deliver their babies in health facilities.
- Up to 30% of maternal deaths are due to unsafe abortion.
- The displaced people who return home often face unimaginable difficulties: No clean water, no health clinics, nor schools for their children.
RAISE Partner
Marie Stopes Uganda has been providing comprehensive RH services to internally displaced people in northern Uganda since 2002. (mariestopes.org)


