Safe Births + Healthy Homes (SB+HH) is a maternal and infant health program serving vulnerable, rural communities in Uganda. Designed to sensitize attended births and improve maternal and infant health in rural off-grid communities with high maternal and child mortality rates, SB+HH (1) solar-electrifies rural health clinics, (2) provides training materials about the benefits of renewable lighting and energy access to staff and community health teams, and (3) donates solar lights for home use to all mother/baby pairs delivered at the electrified clinics to improve postpartum care and outcomes. The incentive of a solar light to mothers delivering at the solar-electrified clinics improves safety and health at home during the critical postpartum period, while the provision of electricity at the clinic improves overall care including delivery outcomes. Moreover, SB+HH and its component activities (i.e., solar light distribution, clinic electrification, community education, and advocacy) have demonstrated evidence of implementation success and impact through formal and informal evaluation.

Providing mothers and babies with the tools and training they need to be healthy and safe improves a wide range of SDGs including SDG1, 3, 5, 7, 13. In vulnerable off-grid communities, even basic energy access continues to be predicated on market participation. When a new mother gives birth by the light of candle or tries to care for her infant by the light of a dangerous, polluting kerosene lamp, energy poverty becomes a predictor of birth complications and poor postpartum respiratory health. Health clinics require electricity to provide adequate and appropriate healthcare. However, many rural frontline health clinics in off-grid communities lack access to basic electrification for indoor, perimeter, staff quarters lighting and for powering computers, phones and microscopes. SB+HH provides basic solar-electrification systems to health clinics in the absence of government electrification projects. Furthermore, more than 90% of homes in many rural off-grid Ugandan communities lack access to electricity. When mothers are able to deliver at an electrified clinic, they often return home to unsafe lighting inputs like kerosene and candles where they and their infants are exposed to dangerous levels of black carbon (soot) and increased risks of respiratory infections. SB+HH donates safe solar lights to new mothers to improve the interlinked SDGs affecting, heatlh, safety, empowerment, and economic stability. LTBLI operates in the social safety net space where Sustainable Development Goal 7 intersects with SDG3, SDG5, SDG1, and SDG13. Although the impacts of energy access on health and safety are well established, lighting access remains tied to loans in last-mile communities. We argue against creating debt burdens for poor families while acknowledging that safe lighting promotes maternal and child health and wellbeing. New mothers who receive a solar light through SB+HH cite a range of benefits including reduced gender based violence and increased maternal/infant health, maternal empowerment and economic stability as primary benefits of SB+HH.

www.LetThereBeLightInternational.org/safebirthshealthyhomes