Forging new solutions for health

“Paving the Road to Health Equity” with Rose Mary Nakame, an NGO-founder from Uganda. Nakame will discuss successful bottom-up approaches utilized by her organization in addressing  the challenges to achieving health equity among the impoverished settings in Uganda. Nakame battled a benign brain tumor at an early age, yet her parents were from a low socio-economic background, which meant poor access to better diagnostic health care. In addition, she felt less important to her community, which tends to value boys more than girls. Her story is like many females who make up half of Uganda’s population and 67 percent of Ugandans living in poverty. Her experience inspired her to work towards increasing access to quality health care, undertaking health related courses and later on, founding REMI East Africa in November 2015. As an executive director of REMI East Africa, she has influenced public health policy and financing through strategic memberships. For example, she lobbied with the Maternal-Child Health Coalition for increment in 2017/2018 National health financing from 1.5 to 1.8 billion Ugandan shillings through the Parliamentary Health Subcommittee.