ICOBI with support from UPHSP funded by USAID is implementing a community mobilization activity for CHI in 4 districts of Uganda. The four target districts are Sheema and Rukungiri in Western Uganda and Jinja and Wakiso in central and Eastern Uganda. The overall goal of this proposed project is to contribute to the increased access and affordability of quality health care services to families in rural and semi‐urban communities in the districts already indicated. This will be achieved through initiatives to expand and strengthen the savings for health among community savings groups while promoting and providing community health insurance (CHI).

 

More success has been achieved in the 11 months of the project which can be evidenced by the increase in enrolments which are as a result of increased sensitization through radio, community sensitization meetings by the mobilizers and other project staff, increased programme uptake and increased desire from all the project Districts to have the project continued. We are confident that we shall achieve more in this last quarter that we have achieved not ruling out the challenges that we continue to face especially poverty that affects the project enrolment. We have been able to do the following in this quarter that ended on January 10th 2018:

  • Enrolment of beneficiaries into the project has increased and we were able to enrol 6,228 beneficiaries within 11 months.
  • Health workers from our partner Health facilities were trained in all the 4 Districts of Sheema, Rukungiri, Wakiso and Jinja. The total number of Health Workers trained is 98.
  • Participatory radio talk shows aimed at creating awareness about Community Health Plan were held covering the project Districts which helped to dispel myths and misconceptions about Health Insurance. These radio programmes helped to increase the enrolment into the programme.
  • Capacity building for VSLA/SILC groups and SACCOs was conducted in all the 4 Districts targeting members and chairpersons of the VSLAs/SILC groups and SACCOs. This helped the members and groups to learn about saving for health and how they can plan to get a percentage of their savings and put it on health to enable members subscribe to health insurance schemes. This has helped members to continue belonging to health insurance schemes even after the project end.
  • Mobilization and sensitization meetings/trainings for Local leaders at Sub-County, District and parish levels was done which helped the leaders to understand Community Health Insurance, support it and mobilize people in their different locations to enrol and benefit from the project.
  • Exchange learning visits were organised for SACCO/VSLA/SILC group leaders and members from the 3 Districts of Wakiso, Jinja and Rukungiri to Butuuro people’s SACCO in Bushenyi which has a health saving scheme and a medical centre to learn how they can do the same in their different groups when they get back to their Districts. It was a success and people learnt about health saving, how they can save for health through their SACCOs and VSLA groups.
  • Development of the CHPFA information system where enrolments were done via mobile applications and synced with the membership databases at the participating health centres.
  • Another highlight was the invitation and attendance of ICOBI to the National Community Health Financing conference organised by Save for Health Uganda. ICOBI attended and one of our volunteers/mobilizers from Jinja presented on how she managed to mobilise and enrol people into the Community Health Plan scheme, lessons and challenges faced and how she managed to solve them.

 

 

District Groups Enrolled Households Total Members
Jinja 60 237 910
Rukungiri 80 192 882
Sheema 121 985 3,982
Wakiso 37 113 454
Total 298 1,527 6,228