Healthy Villages
“Healthy Villages” is an innovative, grassroots approach to addressing rural healthcare and public health in Uganda. Its goal is to improve the provision of healthcare and of preventative health education to underserved populations across rural Iganga District. Though “Healthy Villages” we target the primary health risks of the region at a village-by village-level, working always with the District Health Office (DHO) of Iganga, with Sub-County officials, and with local Health Center staff.
Meet Our Healthy Villages
We launched Healthy Villages in five ‘pilot’ villages during the summer of 2009, and will eventually expand to work in a total of 70 chosen villages. All villages are based around the same five health centers, and all fall into the bottom quartile in sanitation and access to clean water. In this way, we have chosen to work with the most underserved villages in Iganga District.
They vary in size, holding anywhere from a hundred to three hundred households, and the households range from tiny, mud-and-thatch huts to small but well-built brick houses with tidy compounds and gardens around. Even the main roads of the villages are simply dusty, red dirt paths which wind through crops and fields and grass. The smaller paths are barely distinguishable, crisscrossing the village like a web of red amongst the green. Cows, goats and chickens wander freely, and a plethora of children spill out of every compound – playing, gathering water, ride bicycles far too tall for them, and staring with wide eyes at any strange visitors to the village. Women sit outside their houses in the afternoon, cooking or weaving mats or chatting under the small shade of a tree or overhanging roof. A passerby must greet the residents of each compound as he walks along, exchanging a series of soft-spoken questions and answers that gives the impression of singing a duet rather than just exchanging pleasantries.
Through the Healthy Villages program, we work at a village-by-village level to address the most pressing healthcare concerns of each community; malaria, HIV/AIDS, safe water access, household sanitation and hygiene practices, latrine coverage, and family planning access, just to name a few. We partner with small Community Based Organizations (CBOs), larger Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), international volunteers and experts, and government officials ranging from the district to the village level.
In each of our Healthy Villages, we:
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Healthy Village Profiles – Learn More! |



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