Professor Ndola Prata and the Bixby Center work to support women’s reproductive health in Uganda
UCB Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health (MCAH) Professor and Bixby Center for Population, Health and Sustainability Director and Chair Ndola Prata and University of Wyoming Law Professor Noah Novogrodsky gave a presentation at Berkeley Law School on September 20th. The talk, titled “A Landmark Case on Maternal Mortality in Uganda”, detailed their contributions to an ongoing major reproductive rights case against the Ugandan government.
We asked the Bixby Center’s Assistant Director Karen Weidert, MPH, for details about the case. She shared with us the importance of the research of the Bixby Center, and particularly of Professor Prata, in demonstrating the case’s public health angle.
Said Weidert, “In 2011, the Center for Health, Human Rights and Development in Uganda (CEHURD) sued the (Ugandan) government over unnecessary maternal deaths. They argued that by not providing the essential health services women required to save their lives, (the government) was violating constitutionally enshrined health rights. The case was dismissed in 2012, but the dismissal was overturned in 2015, which is where we came in.”
To help with the case, initially, CEHURD contacted Berkeley Law graduate Noah Novogrodsky, Professor of Law and Ethics at University of Wyoming and Director of the UW Center for International Human Rights Law and Advocacy. With the help of New York-based law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, they determined that a report was needed to demonstrate how the Ugandan government wasn’t meeting the basic needs of the country’s women. A report, said Weidert, “written by an expert that could connect the dots of the health implications, rather than just focusing on human rights and the law.”
Weidert said, “The Human Rights Center at Berkeley immediately thought of Ndola. We were tasked with conducting secondary data analysis to provide an overview of maternal mortality in Uganda, including risk factors, policies and plans for addressing maternal mortality, infrastructure, surveillance, and population-wide and individual interventions. The report also highlights gaps and missed opportunities in the government’s effort to prevent and treat maternal mortality, as well as giving recommendations for the future.” Through this report, the Bixby Center demonstrated that Uganda continues to face challenges in implementing well-known, affordable, and effective approaches for reducing maternal deaths from preventable causes.
However, since the report has been submitted to the Ugandan court, the case has stalled. Why? According to Weidert, “CEHURD believes this is partially because the report is so damning. Since we largely cite government documents, there’s no way they can say they didn't know unnecessary maternal deaths were happening, and that they weren’t following through on their own strategies.”
MCAH graduate Liz Crane (MPH ‘18) was hired as a GSR on the project, and, according to Weidert, “she was a rockstar, going through hundreds of reports from the government as we prepared our report.”
We look forward to hearing more about the case and the important role Professor Prata, Ms. Weidert, and the Bixby researchers continue to play in fighting for women’s reproductive rights in Uganda.