Authors: Babughirana Geoffrey, Kamanga Gilbert, Komukama Anita, Muhumuza Richard, Apire Samuel, Musasizi Benon, Tumuhameho Andrew.
90% of mothers reported having attended antenatal care at least once in their last pregnancy and deliver from the health facility. However 25% of the midwives’ positions in the project area were filled, this therefore meant that skilled providers were not conducting ANC and safe deliveries. The project therefore went into a privatepublic partnership with the District to hire midwives. The Purpose of this paper is to document the processes, contributions and lessons learnt during the implementation of the Human Resource support offered to the District of Kitgum through the EAMNCH project. A mixed methods explanatory study design was adopted to assess the contribution of supporting the Human Resource for Health in the project area. This approach used qualitative and quantitative research approaches where qualitative and quantitative viewpoints, data collection, analysis, inference techniques were applied. Finding point to the fact that availability of skilled human resource for health is still visibly a challenge and there is need for a strong advocacy agenda focusing on health delivery systems from the lower level. Health-care partners implementing MNCH activities that are engaging a specific cadre in the health system need to be cognizant of the fact that achieving the set goals of such interventions requires a well thought out implementation plan. There is need to introduce a dual implementation strategy between the actual technical support with staff and the utilization of advocacy platforms that created demand for services. MNCH projects being implemented by Districts supported by partners need to strengthen the baselining processes to include services availability and readiness assessments and the Global partnership for improvement of MNCH needs to redefine sustainability for implementation.
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