Challenge
More than 30 women and 180 newborns die each day in Tanzania due to labor complications and lack of quality care stemming from the lack of critical infrastructure, equipment, lifesaving supplies and adequate health workforce.

Solution
By ensuring that health facilities are equipped to deliver Comprehensive Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care services, we can effectively address the fatal complications of childbirth, including severe bleeding, infection, prolonged or obstructed labor, eclampsia, and asphyxia in the newborn.

How We Create Change
WRA Tanzania’s new Strategic Plan 2019–2022 will increase access for all women and newborns to quality maternal and newborn health services before, during and after childbirth.

Current Campaigns
Out of the 700 health centers in Tanzania, only 117 — roughly 16% — provide emergency maternity services. On a mission to improve maternal and child health in Tanzania, WRA Tanzania, together with its partners and champions, launched a campaign to bolster the budget for maternal health with the slogans, “Zero Tolerance to Maternal Death: BE ACCOUNTABLE,” and “Social Accountability for Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health.”

By bringing attention to the issue of maternal death in Tanzania on the national and international level, WRA Tanzania has been able to work with policy makers, responsible ministries, citizens and media   to secure the allocation of more financial resources for Comprehensive Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care (CEmONC) and to put in place measures to protect the budget once allocated, also called ring fencing, leading to an historic increase of 52.6% in the budget for maternal and newborn health from the previous year.

Our Impact

• In 2017, WRA Tanzania secured a 52.6% increase to the country’s maternal health budget, ensuring emergency services would be available to more pregnant women, new mothers and their babies. Read more.
• Between 2013-2015, WRA Tanzania successfully advocated that health centers in Rukwa Region have the staff, equipment and supplies to provide emergency maternal and newborn health services. Now, 50% of all Rukwa health centers there can provide life-saving services to women and babies who need them. We are now duplicating that effort for the rest of the country. Read the impact study.