Who We Are

St. Augustine Community Health Centre as known as SACH has been in existence since 2015. It’s a registered community-based organization started by members to increase access to quality sexual and reproductive health services and information. Our target is the vulnerable and poor adolescents, young women and men.

We are currently operating in the districts of Mbarara, Mbarara City, Isingiro, Ntangamo, Bushenyi and Sheema. We exist to improve access to quality sexual and reproductive health (SRH) information and services to the less privileged people in our communities (adolescent girls and young women, women living in poverty, girls and women living in slums, persons with disabilities, and key and priority populations).

We support provision of SRH services through partnership with public and private healthcare facilities that provide modern family planning, post abortion care, HIV/AIDS care and treatment, STD/STI management and cervical cancer screening services. Through collaboration and partnership with district leaders (health, and community departments), public and private healthcare facilities, community members, and mobilization and referral through community-based mobilisers, we have supported less privileged community members to have increased access to SRH services in a manner that meets their needs and interest.

In 2021, we supported HIV testing among 600 young women and girls, 24(4%) of whom tested positive, and were linked to HIV care and treatment. We also implemented a project scaling up Community ART Adherence support, Retention and ART treatment literacy for PLHIV in the UPDF Makenke barracks army hospital. Over six months of implementing this project, 26 uniformed men and 16 pregnant mothers who had been lost to follow up were returned into care.

Further, over a period of 39 months (October 2018 to December 2021), we successfully implemented a Mbarara-Do-It Safe (MBA-DIS) project with funding from Safe abortion action fund (SAAF)/IPPF which supported 2,365 women and girls to access post abortion care services over and above the set target of 1,852. The project also supported 5,236 women and young girls to have increased knowledge on prevention of unwanted pregnancy and unsafe abortion (over and above set target of 5,094). Further, successful implementation of this project was associated with 391 unsafe abortions averted, 29 maternal deaths prevented, and 998 unwanted pregnancies prevented.