GIVING DIGEST | Rotary’s Campaign for Newborns
Some acts of giving are loud. Others are quiet, like an incubator humming through the night, keeping a newborn alive.
Newly appointed Rotary District 9214 Governor Christine Kyeyune Kawooya has stepped into leadership with a mission rooted in compassion and resolve: to ensure that the most vulnerable among us, newborn babies, aren’t left to struggle for survival because of a missing machine.
In Uganda and Tanzania, where infant mortality rates remain alarmingly high, hospitals like Kawempe Referral tell a tragic story: three babies sharing one incubator. Not due to negligence, but due to lack. It’s a silent crisis, hidden in NICUs, where tiny lungs fight to breathe, and overstretched midwives do their best with too little.
Kawooya’s campaign to raise funds for neonatal incubators is not just about equipment, it’s about equity. It's about transforming a health system where the beginning of life is often met with scarcity, not safety. It’s a call to Rotarians, communities, and institutions to stop treating maternal and neonatal survival as charity, and start treating it as a human right.
She isn’t stopping at fundraising. From empowering teenage mothers through the Start with Her project to training midwives and deploying village tricycle ambulances, Kawooya is weaving a fabric of care that holds space for both prevention and dignity.
🌱 To give an incubator is to give breath, time, and possibility. It’s a reminder that saving lives doesn’t always require heroics, just the courage to care and the commitment to act.
Source: Daily Monitor – “Rotary Governor Fundraises for Neonatal Incubators” by Eddie Ssejjoba