Voices from the Capacity Project

“When I started working at the Uganda Nurses and Midwives Council in 2000,” recalls former registrar Rita Matte, “data management was a nightmare! Documents in the form of papers, registers, forms were everywhere.” Margaret Lutalo, the council’s senior nursing officer, confesses, “I used to feel guilty when requested to talk about the total number of qualified nurses and midwives in the country because I knew that we did not have accurate data.”

To help build the health workforce in Uganda, the Capacity Project is assisting the Ministry of Health to strengthen its human resources management and ability to gather and use accurate data for strategic planning. With key partners, the Project formed a Health Workforce Advisory Board to guide the process. The board is “a forum where important knowledge, experiences and views on HR have been exchanged among members,” says Benjamin Udongo, registrar for the Allied Health Professionals Council. Board members represent the Ministry of Health, Uganda’s four health professional councils, training institutions and nongovernmental organizations.

The Capacity Project is currently supporting training workshops in five Project-supported nursing and midwifery schools in Rwanda.