25 September, 2015 by Buwembo David in Health News

The Uganda Village Project works with rural communities in the Iganga District to promote health and sanitation throughout a three-year project called the "Healthy Villages Initiative". As part of the initiative, each village is engaged with UVP in five areas of health, including family planning and contraception, water sanitation and hygiene, malaria, HIV/AIDS, and shallow wells. This past year we were able to collect data on those areas from approximately 5,600 individuals, giving the organization an accurate window into the lives of rural community members. In the data tool questions were also included related to health care usage and associated costs, which had some shocking results.

From the survey we found that 50 percent of the 236 households which had visited a hospital in the past 12 months had to pay more than 50,000 Ugandan Schillings for that visit, which was then equivalent to about 15$. Though that does not seem much, for the mainly subsistence farming communities in the Iganga District that can often be one quarter to one third of the monthly income for a household, especially during the end of dry season. Supporting a family of six, the average family size in the communities where UVP works, becomes much harder when one quarter of your income is used for a hospital visit. Of the 236 households, approximately 45 percent of them had to borrow or sell household assets to pay for the visit, resulting in a less financially secure household that will have even more difficultly paying for the next unexpected cost.