Keeping Uganda’s Smallest Babies Warm: BAMA and Embrace Global Expand Newborn Care
For a newborn baby, something as simple as staying warm can be lifesaving.
This is especially true for premature and low-birth-weight babies, who are particularly vulnerable to hypothermia. In Uganda, where too many newborns still die from preventable causes, ensuring that babies stay warm before, during, and after referral is an important part of strengthening the quality of newborn care.
That is why Babies and Mothers Alive (BAMA) is partnering with Embrace Global to expand access to infant warmers across the Greater Masaka and Rwenzori regions of Uganda.
Together, we are bringing life-saving thermal care closer to the babies who need it most — while strengthening the health systems around them.
541 warmers. 92 health facilities. 41 ambulances.
Through the partnership, BAMA and Embrace Global aim to deliver 541 infant warmers across Greater Masaka and Rwenzori.
Rather than distributing the devices evenly, their placement is guided by BAMA’s assessment of where the need is greatest across our network of 92 health facilities and 41 government ambulances.
This means putting warmers at the critical points along a newborn’s journey: in delivery rooms, operating theatres and newborn care units, as well as in the ambulances transferring vulnerable babies between facilities.
But providing equipment is only one part of the solution.
Healthcare providers at participating facilities will receive training on setting up, safely using, cleaning and reporting on the devices. This training will be integrated into BAMA’s existing mentorship visits, helping make thermal care part of everyday newborn care rather than an additional, stand-alone intervention.
As Dr. Daniel Murokora, Executive Director of BAMA Foundation, explains:
“BAMA has spent twenty years building trusted partnerships with communities and health workers across Masaka and, more recently, Rwenzori and Busoga. This partnership with Embrace Global lets us bring that trust to something concrete: a warmer in the delivery room, in the theatre, in the ambulance — wherever a newborn needs one.”
Every second matters
For the health workers caring for vulnerable newborns every day, the impact is much more than a number.
“In the NICU, every second matters. We care for babies small enough to fit in the palm of a hand, fighting battles they should never have to face so early in life,” says Justine, a midwife with BAMA. “Access to essential thermal care, oxygen, CPAP, trained staff, and quality newborn care gives these tiny fighters a real chance to survive and thrive.”
And ultimately, she says, one moment makes all the work worthwhile:
“The most emotional moment for us is seeing a mother finally carry her baby home healthy after days or weeks of uncertainty.”
From equipment to lasting systems change
The ambition behind this partnership goes beyond getting warmers into facilities.
Embrace Global has already seen how introducing infant warmers alongside training and health-system partnerships can lead to change at a much larger scale. In Sudan, Embrace Global’s infant warmers have been incorporated into the national newborn care training manual. In Zambia, the Ministry of Health is including the devices in national neonatal transport standards.
BAMA and Embrace Global hope to build similar evidence in Uganda.
By integrating the devices into existing, government-led newborn care initiatives, gathering evidence from facilities and working closely with healthcare providers, the partnership can demonstrate what effective thermal care looks like in practice — and help build the case for broader adoption.
As Melody Westen, CEO of Embrace Global, says:
“BAMA has the relationships and the expertise on the ground. We’re bringing the equipment and the training to match it. That is how this becomes evidence for national scale-up, not just one shipment.”
The first step, not the finish line
The first 150 infant warmers are now moving into Masaka and Rwenzori.
Another 364 warmers have already been identified as necessary to fully cover BAMA’s network.
There is still a long way to go. But this partnership represents an important step towards ensuring that where a baby is born — or how far they need to travel for care — does not determine whether they have access to something as fundamental as warmth.
For BAMA, that is what sustainable change looks like: working alongside communities, health workers and government systems to identify gaps, introduce practical solutions, and build those solutions into the way care is delivered every day.
Because every newborn deserves not only the chance to survive, but the chance to go home healthy in their mother’s arms.
About Babies and Mothers Alive (BAMA)
BAMA is a locally led nonprofit in Uganda working to close the gaps that cause preventable maternal and newborn deaths in Uganda, where 189 women die for every 100,000 live births and 36 infants die for every 1,000 live births from complications of pregnancy and childbirth. Grounded in the belief that the real experts are local, BAMA partners with communities and health systems to address the Three Delays: the delay in deciding to seek care, the delay in reaching care, and the delay in receiving quality care once there.
About Embrace Global
Embrace Global is a nonprofit delivering life-saving warmth to vulnerable newborns in fragile health systems across more than 30 countries. Embrace does not donate devices. It builds solutions, combining equipment, training, and partnership, to prevent neonatal hypothermia and strengthen health systems from the inside. Since its founding, Embrace has helped more than 1.4 million babies. Its goal is to reach 5 million babies a year by 2035.
