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Sexual Reproductive Health and Covid 19 in Uganda: Avoiding the pitfalls of unintended consequences
Health systems are being confronted with rapidly increasing demand generated by the COVID-19 outbreak. When health systems are overwhelmed, both direct mortality from an outbreak and indirect mortality from vaccine-preventable and treatable conditions increase dramatically. Analyses from the 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak suggest that the increased number of deaths caused by measles, malaria, HIV/ AIDS, and tuberculosis attributable to health system failures exceeded deaths from Ebola (1, 2).
As the The World Health Organisations (WHO) recommended, during the COVID-19 pandemic countries need to make difficult decisions to balance the demands of responding directly to COVID-19, while simultaneously engaging in strategic planning and coordinated action to maintain essential health service delivery, mitigating the risk of system collapse (11).
We therefore would like to call upon the government to ensure that the lock down does not have a huge negative impact on access to life saving health care for the most common conditions in Uganda, including maternal health services, after all, just because there is a COVID-19 outbreak does not mean that people have stopped facing other health conditions.
This technical brief aims to articulate priorities for action that are worth considering so as to prepare for, control and mitigate the health consequences of COVID-19 in Uganda with a special focus on sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health and nutrition.
Through the brief, we would also like to give some guidance and recommendations to government, CSOs and other stakeholders with regards to ensuring access to health care services related to Sexual and Reproductive Health including Maternal, Newborn and Child Health during the hard times of dealing with epidemics and pandemics in Uganda with a special reference to the Novel Coronavirus pandemic.