NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Thursday, January 7, 2016

If juggling multiple tasks were an Olympic sport, Jane Mpanga would have a gold medal.

At the Good Samaritan Clinic in Kampala, Uganda, which she owns and runs, Jane checks in on patients, talks with her community outreach workers, reviews lab reports and calls women who have missed appointments to see if they need a ride.

When she was a young girl, she admired midwives and loved to watch them deliver babies in her village. She decided to get her training in midwifery. The first time she delivered a baby was in 1987. She says, “It was a girl. I told the mother to name her after me and she did!”

Before she joined Pro-Fam, a social franchise operated by PACE, a PSI network member, Jane had a one-room clinic. When Pro-Fam chose her as a partner to help expand family planning and maternal health services to women in Uganda, she needed more room. She was able to get a two-year loan with Pro-Fam’s support. (Interestingly, she then ended up helping the loan officer by providing her with an IUD.)

With help from PACE and PSI, Jane is now trained in providing comprehensive family planning services including child birthing services, IUDs, postpartum IUDs, cancer screening and infection prevention. PSI has also taught her business management, which has helped her grow her services.