By Dr. Simon Peter Kayondo
July 27, 2023
KAMPALA – Under normal circumstances, gynecologists (doctors who specialize in female reproductive health) should be attending to mothers and prospective mothers with pregnancy or child birth complications in maternity wards; but as fate would have it, members of the Association of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in Uganda (AOGU) have also joined the Sexual, Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) advocacy movement for obvious reasons.
As a member of AOGU, I think this move was long overdue given the not so impressive maternal and child health statistics in our country. For a long time for instance, the teenage pregnancy rate has stagnated at a high of 25% with some regions and districts way above this national average. The situation became worse at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.