Fast tracking progress to reduce Maternal and Child Mortality: Removing Barriers to Seeking, Reaching and Giving Care

It is very well possible to reduce maternal and neonatal death by ICT, mobile phones, performance based financing and task shifting. Although there is progress in these areas in Uganda, there are still factors contributing to the death of pregnant or birth-giving women and newborn children like hemorrhage, sepsis/infection, hypertension, preterm birth and tetanus. Interventions to avoid or prevent problems such as lack of correct information, a skilled attendant and access to quality health care still show gaps. In order to reduce maternal and neonatal death, an integrated approach according to the 3 delay model (delay in decision to seek care, delay in reaching care and delay in receiving care) is of utmost importance. Interventions will be developed to a) removing barriers to seek care with focus on the information gap; b) ensure women to reach care with focus on transport through formation of saving schemes; c) strengthen the capacity to give care with focus on training health workers, support supervision, giving job aids and task-shifting between health staff and village health teams. Methods and technology to be used to achieve the above are mobile telephones to increase access to information for pregnant women, men, health providers and village health teams and use of mobile phones by health workers to document, report and access data and information.