KATINE COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS PROJECT - Guardian.co.uk

In order to ensure greater integration between the project components, an effort has been
made to foster significant collaboration in delivering health related activities through VHTs. For
example, the health, water and sanitation and community empowerment project component
used the same VHTs for the delivery of services, sharing information and joint training in order
to achieve integrated activity execution. The education, water and sanitation (WATSAN) and
health components worked jointly with the school health committees to promote hygiene and
sanitation in schools. Community empowerment has worked in tandem with all other
components in developing IEC messages on health, education and water for the development
of posters, brochures, t-shirts, inscriptions in compounds and leaflets through focus groups at
village level and IEC working groups at sub-county and district level reflecting all components.
The project management and implementation structures from community to sub-county and
district level also ensure effective integration takes place by reviewing progress on activities
and outcomes.
1.0 BACKGROUND INFORMATION
1.1 Development Context in Uganda
Uganda is one of the poorest countries in the world, ranking 146 th out of 177 in the 2004
Human Development Index. The population of Uganda is estimated at 28 million and life
expectancy is only 49.3 years according to the World Health Organisation. A contributing
factor to the low life expectancy in Uganda is the fact that 31% of the population currently live
below the poverty line (UBOS 2007).
In an effort to pull Uganda’s out of its poverty trap, the country has introduced a number of
policy and institutional reforms which have seen the HIV/AIDS prevalence decline from 30% in
the late 1980s to 6.1% in 2006. The Uganda AIDS Commission Report states that by 2002,
new infections were 70,170 while new AIDS cases were 73,830 with 75,290 deaths per year.
The high HIV prevalence is largely responsible for the loss of Uganda’s workforce,
contributing to low economic productivity. Other improvements include access to safe water
increasing from 50% in 2000 to 63% in 2006, primary school enrolment increasing from 62.3%
(1992) to 86% (2006), GDP per capita growing at an average of 3.6% since 1995 (PEAP
2006) and poverty prevalence falling from 56% in 1992 to 31% in 2007 (UBOS). In education,
enrolment has increased due to Universal Primary Education (UPE) which was launched in
December 1996 by the president of Uganda - Yoweri Museveni - in accordance with the
Government White Paper on Education. In 2002, Museveni stated that the policy would
ensure that ‘all children of school going age should benefit from UPE’ (Opulot, 2002).
Enrolment figures after the launching of UPE shot up figures from 2.5 million in 2006 to 6.8
million in 2000 (Ministry of Education and Sports 2001 b:1). Despite this progress, challenges
still remain. There is inadequate participatory planning and poor human resource capacity
within local government sectors. For instance, the doctor to population ratio in Uganda is
1:18,000 (MOH) and in Katine sub-county, there are no doctors for a population of about
25,000. There are also inadequate classrooms and teachers for the increased number of
students enrolling in primary schools under Museveni’s initiative.
KCPP six monthly narrative report - October 2007 to March 2008 8