I consider myself a strong advocate for the wide availability of family planning methods, and of women being able to decide if and when they want to become pregnant.
Maureen Kanyiginya is a young midwife with a gentle, confident presence. Sitting on a bench in a grassy area outside the rural health center where she works, in western Uganda, she says she loves helping mothers and delivering their babies. "I make mothers comfortable," she states firmly. "I'm a health worker."
In 24 months, 1,919 babies have been delivered in government health centers in these two communities, and only one of them has been found HIV-positive. That’s a pretty good performance, even in a country with a relatively low 1.5% adult HIV prevalence.
An email in my inbox one month ago invited me to attend the first planning meeting for a visit by Pape Gaye, our president and CEO, to Tanzania, but it was also an invitation to elevate health and health workers as newsworthy topics to my former teammates: journalists.