Pamoja Health Initiative - Kampala, Uganda

Pamoja Health Initiative (PHI) is a health focused organization that promotes health
empowerment among the youth and their communities through health education and
sensitization, promotion of health seeking behaviors and building the capacity of the youth
through skills development and nurturing them in entrepreneurship in order to reduce their
socio-economic vulnerability to HIV infection, early pregnancy, domestic violence, maternal
mortality and morbidity and other sexual reproductive health challenges.
Our work builds the capacity of the youth to respond to sexual reproductive health challenge
through increasing access to accurate information to help them make informed decisions,
empowering the youth with life skills to bring a positive change in their behaviors as well  

Show more

as
giving them a platform to connect and deliberate on the issues affecting their lives.
Background
Pamoja is a Swahili word meaning “Togetherness “which motivates us to come together in
addressing the problems affecting humanity. Pamoja Health Initiative started as a 5% profit
contribution of Pamoja Tour and Travel as a corporate socio responsibility (CSR) campaign to
impact vulnerable communities. As a reputable and professional Tour and Travel company
carrying out numerous safaris in diverse regions of East Africa ,Mr. Mukiibi sperito the
proprietor of Pamoja Tours and travel and at the same time a Health Administrator specialist
came together with other professionals to form Pamoja health Initiative to focus on the work of
transforming lives of youth and impacting their communities.
In Uganda, where Pamoja tours and Travel company head offices are; the population is
approximately 37 million with over 55% of the population is below the age of 18 years. This
ranks Uganda among the 2nd of top 30 countries with the youngest population in the world.
(According to World Atlas Report. www.worldatlas.com)
This population is characterized of high infertility rate of 5.4 children geared by High teenage
pregnancy rate of 25%, Low contraceptive use of 39%, High unmet need for family planning
uptake of 28%, High desired family size of 5.7 for men & 4.8 for women, male sex preference by
couples and above all the escalating HIV/AIDs prevalence rate at 6.5% among adults, 7.7 among
women between age of 15 to 49 and 5.3 for men. Worse still, HIV/Aids prevalence among
young women is 3.8 & 1.9 for young men.
This intern has led to increased Infant mortality of 43 births per live 1000 births (UDHS 2016),
Under five mortality was 64 births per 1000 live births (UDHS 2016) & Maternal mortality was
368/100,000 live births in 2012 (UDHS 2016) (According to UNAIDS)