Uganda faces persistently high fertility rates, low modern contraceptive prevalence (mCPR), and heavy reliance on donor funding for Family Planning commodities. Public sector funding for essential medicines remains less than 20% of need; donors provide over 70%. Disparities persist between rural and urban, rich and poor, and stockouts, high out-of-pocket payments, and inefficient market segmentation challenge access.
The Increasing Access to Sexual and Reproductive Health Commodities and Services Through Private Sector Channels (ACTUATE) project, funded by the Royal Embassy of the Netherlands through DKT as the consortium lead, aims at increasing access to SRH commodities and services through private sector channels in Uganda.
Working closely with the Ministry of Health (MoH), Population Services International Uganda (PSIU) is focused on improving public-private collaboration to enhance the efficiency of the sexual reproductive health market.
This included finalizing and launching the Total Market Approach (TMA) strategy, reconstituting and operationalizing the TMA Task Force co-chaired by the pharmacy and reproductive health departments at the MoH, high-level advocacy engagements for increased investment in strengthening the private sector for health, and expanding new channels in the private sector for FP service provision, among other things.
The Total Market Approach (TMA) is a sustainable resource mobilization approach that segments the population according to their ability and willingness to pay for services/products and targets the different segments with free, subsidized, or fully priced commodities to increase equitable access.
Collaboratively, the strategy was disseminated in over 65 districts, including the ACTUATE districts, to create buy-in for its implementation at the subnational level.
The Ministry of Health, in alignment with Vision 2040 and the SDGs, adopted the Total Market Approach to:
