WAITING MOTHERS’ HOSTEL

A HAVEN FOR UGANDA’S EXPECTING MOTHERS

For many expecting mothers who live in rural Uganda, a traditional homebirth with help from a midwife is the only option. While these homebirths are a beautiful way to welcome a new life into the world, complications can mean an arduous, sometimes life-threatening journey to the hospital. Prior to 2008, this situation played out all too often for the mothers and babies in rural villages bordering Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.

To address this situation, the Kellermann Foundation and AKP-supported Bwindi Community Hospital (BCH) opened a Waiting Mothers’ Hostel in 2008, providing expecting mothers with a bed, access to a communal kitchen and laundry, and childbirth and parenting education. Here, the women live in community with each other while they wait to deliver their babies. And when the big day comes, supervised deliveries, midwives, antenatal services and access to emergency obstetric care mean a safer birth experience for mother and child.

The hostel proved so transformational for local mothers, that a 2,000-square-foot expansion of the facility was planned just a decade later. The AKP-funded 2019 addition raised the hostel’s total patient capacity to 42 with the addition of 12 beds, while also adding sleeping quarters for midwives.

The Waiting Mothers’ Hostel now serves around 1,200 mothers per year, with an average of 100 mothers registered each month. As a result, BCH has increased facility-based deliveries from 65% in 2013 to 95% in 2019 — a dramatic contrast to the national rate of 70%. Most importantly, the hostel and its staff have virtually eliminated maternal deaths at the hospital. As a model, the Waiting Mothers’ Hostel has proven so successful that the idea has been replicated in the capitol of Kampala and throughout the East African region.