Though carrying out a safe abortion in Uganda is legal, but legal and health experts are now calling for amendments into the current law saying it has leaved its life span and now calls for changes to suite the current standards as well as to save lives of mothers and young girls.
In a human rights meeting to unpack the legal and policy frame work on abortion, Dr. Olive Sentumbwe who is the family health and population director at WHO says much needs to be done to explain to the local masses to make them understand the benefits of the amendments that experts are calling for as well as providing quality safe abortion services to Ugandans.
However, the assistant commissioner reproductive health in the life ministry, Dr. Collins Tusingwire expresses worries over the fact that Uganda will not be able to achieve mellinium Development Goal 5( MDG.5) if safe abortion laws are not amended yet the vice contributes to high maternal deaths in the country.
But Prof Charles Ngwena from the university of Pretoria delivering his report on the vice, says currently the penal codes in te act are very much powerful than the law which has caused confusion among the citizens, pratcioners and the state and again calls for proper interpretation into the law to have a better one.
And in a related development, Denis Kasirye from the state attorney’s office tells the experts that govt is under the process of amending certain sections in the abortion law though he prefer a massive amendment in the law.
Statistics show that 2 million Ugandan women get pregnant annually, with 900,000 of them unwanted, 400,000 spontaneous abortions carried out and 200,000 unwanted births carried out which now calls for the use of legal safe abortion to prevent the unwanted maternal death among Ugandan girls and women.