At Mulago Specialized Women and Neonatal Hospital in Kampala, Uganda, a mother gave birth to a premature baby boy by emergency cesarean section. Born at 25 weeks gestation, he weighed only 21 ounces.
When nurse Enid Kwaga received the newborn into her care, she leapt into action. Rushing the infant to the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), she first placed him in an incubator. Once the child was warm, Kwaga placed him on an electronic CPAP machine to prevent severe respiratory distress and monitor his breathing and connected a syringe pump to provide fluids and a steady flow of glucose to maintain healthy blood sugar. When days later the baby’s eyes and palms started tinting yellow, Kwaga placed him under the phototherapy machine to treat the jaundice.
After two months in the NICU, the baby grew to over three pounds, healthy enough to go home with the mother, who was overjoyed. She had lost six babies in her first seven pregnancies.
That reunion was possible thanks to Kwaga and the lifesaving equipment at Mulago—one of 280 NICUs across the country to receive investments in improved neonatal care from the Government of Uganda.
Data for Health in Uganda
Before 2020, doctors at health facilities in Uganda were not notifying the country’s Civil Registrar of patient deaths or certifying the cause of death, which is used to produce national vital statistics. Without this important death data, public health leaders had a limited view into the nation’s most life-threatening health challenges. To fill that gap, the CDC Foundation has been working with Ugandan government partners through the Bloomberg Philanthropies Data for Health Initiative to improve mortality data collection, civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems, and data use in the country by training physicians, Field Epidemiology Training Program (FETP) fellows and public health officials within government agencies.
Healthcare providers at Masaka Regional Referral Hospital receive a shipment of new equipment for the neonatal care unit.
Phototherapy machines allow nurses to treat jaundice in newborns.
Enid Kwaga, a nurse at Mulago Specialized Women and Neonatal Hospital, was able to use the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit to save a premature newborn.
Since this project started in 2020, Uganda has seen a 40 percent increase in death notifications and a 28 percent increase in medically certified causes of deaths in health facilities. Public health leaders also now have a highly visual automated death data dashboard, which they use to monitor trends in cause-of-death reporting nationally and identify where they need to intervene.
The CDC Foundation has also helped link government data systems so death data can be transferred in real time, increasing the flow of health information in government systems.
In use since 2024, this death data dashboard revealed a stark picture. While maternal death rates were decreasing year to year, the nation’s neonatal survival rate had stagnated. In 2025 alone, more than 5,000 babies died in their first month of life, accounting for 17 percent of all notified hospital deaths in the country. Dr. Daniel Murokora, Reproductive Health Advisor at the Ugandan Ministry of Health, advocated for swift government response.
“We know that the government has invested in maternal health significantly,” Dr. Murokora said. “But it looked like neonatal health had been left behind.”
With better access to timely information, Ugandan government health officials were able to identify a problem and invest in improving NICUs across the country. By March 2026, the ministry had provided more than 800 new neonatal beds across all units, 89 percent of them equipped with oxygen therapy, 86 percent of them equipped with thermal care and 35 percent of them equipped with CPAP.
Having access to a neonatal unit can make the difference between life and death for babies born prematurely.
Nurses care for infants in the newly equipped NICU at Kawempe National Referral Hospital in Kampala, Uganda.
Making a Difference
Paired with staff training on use and maintenance, the new neonatal unit equipment is already improving the quality of care.
“Health workers tell us that they're more confident to manage small babies,” Dr. Murokora said. “They are starting to notice that they have some improved survival rates from babies.”
Preliminary data from some hospitals show a decline in neonatal deaths beginning in March 2026. With continued training and equipment maintenance, the government hopes to continue to see neonatal death rates drop. Dr. Murokora regularly reviews the death data dashboard to monitor maternal and neonatal death analyses and inform public health interventions. The dashboard, he says, has changed the way the ministry approaches decision-making.
“We see increased interest and demand from senior leadership that decisions are backed by available data,” Dr. Murokora said. “Now, it’s easy to access and review the data.”
Equipped now with regularly available data across the entire continuum of care for both the mother and the baby, the Ministry of Health is helping healthcare facilities more readily identify patients with high-risk pregnancies. When they are better prepared to intervene earlier, during pregnancy, healthcare providers will be better positioned to provide care that improves health outcomes for both the mother and baby.
For healthcare providers like Enid Kwaga, that work is deeply personal.
“We have many mothers who struggle to conceive. For many, their newborn is their only living child,” Kwaga said. “I am helping someone have a child and go home with their baby.”