According to a survey of AMREF, low district health budgets have been identified to be the biggest constraints to improving maternal health services in East Africa.

East Africa Uganda Kenya and Tanzania

The survey that involved the reviewing of status of health of 18 districts and county health systems districts from three East African countries Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania to assess their preparedness to meet the challenge of achieving the Millennium Development Goals also reveals that none the countries has achieved the proposed $40 or 85,000UGX per capita expenditure on health at the districts and counties.

The survey notes that to make matters worse, among the 18 districts reviewed, none of them was ready to carry out the accelerated actions of maternal care to achieve MDG 5 on improving maternal health, for example only 32% of the hospitals in districts had supplies, equipment and staff to offer caesarean sections at the time of the survey.

According to the survey, though most health centers in the districts had the necessary infrastructure to offer high quality maternal care services, only 43% of the health centers had the right staff for the health centers and a paltry 6% had transport services for referral cases because of low financing in the health budgets of the districts.

The survey also says that the low financing in district health budgets explains why only 31.5% of all health facilities offered family planning services and not even consistently as a result of a poor supply chain.

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By Zacharia Tiberindwa, Ultimate Media