By Noha Zeitoun, Content Intern, PSI and Alia McKee, Sea Change Strategies
If juggling multiple tasks were an Olympic sport, Jane Mpanga would have a gold medal.
At the Good Samaritan Clinic in Kampala, Uganda, which she owns and runs, Jane checks in on patients, talks with her community outreach workers, reviews lab reports and calls women who have missed appointments to see if they need a ride.
When she was a young girl, she admired midwives and loved to watch them deliver babies in her village. She decided to get her training in midwifery. The first time she delivered a baby was in 1987. She says, “It was a girl. I told the mother to name her after me and she did!”
Before she joined Pro-Fam, a social franchise operated by PACE, a PSI network member, Jane had a one-room clinic. When Pro-Fam chose her as a partner to help expand family planning and maternal health services to women in Uganda, she needed more room. She was able to get a two-year loan with Pro-Fam’s support. (Interestingly, she then ended up helping the loan officer by providing her with an IUD.)
With help from PACE and PSI, Jane is now trained in providing comprehensive family planning services including child birthing services, IUDs, postpartum IUDs, cancer screening and infection prevention. PSI has also taught her business management, which has helped her grow her services.
She now sees 28 patients a day and delivers close to 25 babies a month.
She says her clinic provides “a lot of love.” When an expecting mother comes in, they give her special attention and care.
One of her clients says, “At the public hospital, the nurses just told us to push the babies, put them on our tummies and said they would come around later to cut the cord. That’s dangerous. I did not want to have that experience with my second child. That’s why I came here.”
Jane says, “People call me Mama Pro Fam. Others call me doctor. With PACE training, I’m competent. Whatever I do, I can do confidently.”
“Now I can send my kids to good schools and they can continue leading good lives.”
For more success stories, go to the series: Stories from Uganda: Lessons in Providing Comprehensive Care for Women. 
