The Non Governmental Organization Forum has strongly appealed to men to be more involved in the fight for better maternal and infant health standards in Africa.

This comes at a time when the African Union summit that has just kicked off in Kampala with the meeting centered on Maternal and Infant Health.

Mother and baby. Many women in Uganda do not deliver safely

The Programme Manager of AMREF, Rose Mukisa has told a public dialogue at Hotel Africana on whether the Kampala African Union Summit will deliver on maternal and child health that unless men are brought on board in the struggle for the improvement of maternal and child health, achieving the desired improvements in this area will on remain a dream.

Mukisa says the problem is that when many people hear about maternal health they think it is women’s problem and that such a perception should be changed if African governments are to effectively deal with this challenge.

Though many African governments have committed to Goal 5 of the Millennium Development Goals that obligates such governments to have improved maternal health by at least 75% by 2015, however reports indicate that most if not all governments are not on course to achieve that target by 2015 like they committed themselves to do.

By Zacharia Tiberindwa, Ultimate Media