Activists have demanded urgent Government action to end preventable maternal deaths. The Constitutional Court hearing of Petition No. 16 of 2011 scheduled for the 7th of July at 9.30 am, was not heard. The petition argues that by not providing essential medical commodities and services to pregnant women, government is violating the constitutional rights of Ugandans including the right to health, right to life and the rights of women.

Highlighting the death of a mother in Mityana district Sylvia Nalubowa, and a district Councilor in Arua, Jannifer Anguko who both died while giving birth due to negligence of health workers, the Petitioner Ms. Nakibuuka Noor for this case from Centre for Health, Human Rights and Development (CEHURD) had made a case.

It was unfortunate that no judge came to have this case heard; this has forced concerned Ugandans to storm court. She adds that, it was communicated by the registrar of the constitutional court that the case could not be heard due to lack of quorum, however it should be noted that this is a human rights case which is supposed to be heard expeditiously.

Many reports of maternal deaths have been reported across the country since the ground breaking case of Sylvia and Jennifer (deceased) case was filed on 3rd March 2011. This is a continuous violation of human rights, it is a shame, government is not making the health of Ugandans and women a priority, the lawyers are saying they were not saved, and have just got to know now. “We are tired, the more court postpones the better to set ourselves, the higher risks and more deaths, empty words cannot work, let us hope that the constitutional court will understand the unacceptable plight that expectant mothers face in Uganda.” Says Hilda Kironde of Uganda community based association for child welfare.

The leading causes of maternal death in Uganda include the massive shortage of trained health workers to attend to births, lack of access to emergency obstetric care for responding to hemorrhage, lack of access to quality antenatal care, and lack of access to family planning services.
If the government of Uganda provides these services in time and in all health centers, and referral hospitals, then this would reduce the death of 16 women every day during child birth in Uganda.
Source: Partners Uganda eforum 2011
http://eforums.healthdev.org/read/messages?id=30551

On 3^rd November, CEHURD held a workshop on access to education and learning materials. The workshop brought together participants with diverse backgrounds in the area of access to education and members working in production of knowledge goods.

The objective of the meeting was to bring together stakeholders working in the field of access to education materials to discuss a concrete advocacy strategy to enable students access education and learning materials.

From the discussions it was discovered that our Copyright and Neighbouring Act of 2006 in Uganda, does not provide for fair use of copyrighted books, as such, once enforcement comes into place, students with habits of photocopying these copyrighted books may be arrested or face stringent legal procedures. Participants also cited the Current education policy which discourages parent participation in contributing towards school textbook stocks in UPE and USE schools with the exception of lunch for their children. This they said is not good.

“ it is possible to see a student buy two phones and properly maintain them with airtime and yet not buy a book!, it is also common in our society  to have a parent buy for his child toys but not books!” noted Mr. Martin Okia from the National Book Trust of Uganda.

As way forward, participants agreed to do a lot more advocacy on changing people’s mindsets about buying books to support the local publishing industry, to write to ministry of Trade to influence reforms in the Copyright Act to enable access to learning Materials as the law is currently problematic and does not ensure access to education materials for students.

Mr. Mulumba also noted that there is need to work within the law, and make use of TRIPS flexibilities to enable access to learning materials.

“Copy right laws should be able to promote access to education materials. If you can acknowledge the source, then reproduction is good what we want is to have laws that allow us to improve on access” Mulumba said. “We need to support the process of formulating these processes, “we can write a letter to the Minister of Trade, that we have seen this bill and that there are problems

and propose recommendations for how we want these provisions to read.” He concluded.