Celebrating Locally-led Development on World TB Day with USAID/Uganda Mission Director
March 25th, 2022 | news
USAID/Uganda Mission Director Richard Nelson visited our Regional Health Integration to Enhance Services- North, Lango (RHITES-N, Lango) project on World Tuberculosis Day as a part of his inaugural visit to Northern Uganda.
Support for Adolescent Girls and Young Women
Mission Director Nelson met with adolescent girls and young women at a JSI-supported DREAMS model safe space, where young women can meet, share experiences, and receive HIV and family planning services from their peers. The safe space is one of 14 across the region, which together have reached more than 138,000 (69%) eligible girls and young women with critical services.
Locally-led Development in Action
The mission director also visited the region’s largest hospital, Lira Regional Referral Hospital. In 2021, our RHITES-N, Lango project transitioned part of its HIV and tuberculosis (TB) portfolio to the hospital, which now leads the implementation of PEPFAR- and USAID-supported HIV and TB interventions. We continue to support Lira Regional Referral Hospital with technical assistance on annual work planning, staff recruitment, refresher training, performance reviews, and ensuring no HIV and TB service delivery disruption.
Mission Director Nelson next visited a drop-in center for key and priority populations in Lira, where health outreach workers and key population peers provide HIV and TB services. Before transitioning oversight of the drop-in center to local partner Joint Clinical Research Centre Uganda in 2021, JSI introduced an “enhanced peer outreach approach,” an incentive-based coupon distribution program used to identify new HIV-positive clients among key population networks. The mission director heard from female sex workers who talked about the services and support they receive at the drop-in center. The mission director shared that this was his first visit to a drop-in center in Uganda and said, “I am happy with the continuum of services offered here, especially the legal services and the income-generating activity.”
