Three winners of the Health Supply Chain Solutions Challenge were named during Uganda’s National Health Supply Chain Week (July 26–30, 2021). The winners were selected from a pool of more than 130 concepts presented to the competition’s judges.

For one of every four women of menstrual age in Uganda, a menstruation period will prevent them from engaging in normal daily life.

Faced with this unpleasant fact plus the threat it poses to the efforts in place to break the vicious cycle of poverty faced by women in rural Uganda as well as the fight against gender imbalance in the workplace, Asiimwe Lydia set out to find an innovative solution to ensure girls stay in school and acquire an education in order to compete favorably.

Forty (40) young people in eight (8) teams from Adjumani, Arua, Yumbe, Moyo, Kitgum, Agago, Amuru and Lamwo have been selected to benefit from a UGX 144 million start-up fund from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to help them kick-start their social businesses addressing challenges faced by women, adolescents and youth in the areas of Sexual and Reproductive Health & Rights and Gender Based Violence.

“So many women in the settlement do not attend antenatal care due to the long distance to a health center, and so many of them even give birth at home. The village health teams only take them to the health centers after delivery”, says Sonic Olara, a refugee living in Palabek Refugee Settlement in Lamwo District. As a former Clinical Officer in Awil hospital in South Sudan, Sonic Olara believes he has a responsibility to address this problem.

After four months of intense business training, mentorship, technical guidance — our cohort of four (4) high-potential social entrepreneur teams, presented working demos of sexual reproductive health innovations for Demo-day. DigiHealth emerged the winner of the Up Accelerate cycle II demo day. The event provided the young entrepreneurs with the opportunity to raise follow-on funding and explore new partnerships that can enable their products access the market.