In January 2016, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), through the Uganda Voucher Plus Activity, launched a free health programme whereby vulnerable poor women in rural areas could access free maternal and newborn health care services in private facilities.

The project which has been running for five years has been able to cover 35 districts in northern and eastern Uganda operating in over 140 private health facilities in these areas and it operates on the basis of women purchasing vouchers at only Shs 4,000 from the village health teams and volunteers which they can use to access quality maternal health care services from private hospitals at no additional costs.

This Covid-19 period has obviously posed a challenge to the project especially due to restriction of movement and curfew which has made it very difficult for expectant mothers to move from their rural areas to health centres in time but Dr Dennis Buluma, the deputy chief of party of the Uganda Voucher Plus Activity said that they have put in place some measures to ensure that women still access health care easily.

He noted that even though some districts where the project was being implemented had health IIIs and IVs which offer maternal services, many women still chose to be part of the project where they would some little money to access health services because even in public facilities where services are meant to be for free they end up paying.

They have also linked the project to other long term financing mechanisms like the Results Based Financing Mechanism where the ministry of Health will work closely with USAID to ensure that the voucher service providers are able to continue providing health services to women through those financing mechanisms.