Ayite Matata

Ayite is a community member of Aunga Parish in Uganda’s Midia Sub-County, is a community medicine distributor. As a community medicine distributor, she works with 13 parishes. Within Media Sub-County, she also serves as the Secretary for Social Services, a reproductive health worker, and a pump mechanic for boreholes, and a volunteer through the civil society organization, Federation of Communities Infected and Affected with HIV/AIDS in Koboko.

As a multifaceted member of her community, Ayite is involved in many activities in her community, including mobilizing resources for malaria control; promoting awareness of malaria symptoms, prevention, and treatment; and coordinating Malaria Awareness Days.  During the 2009 Malaria Awareness Day, Ayite stood out in her brightly colored community medicine distributor t-shirt, presenting nets to participants who answered malaria-related questions correctly demonstrating the process of hanging a net and using it effectively. 

In her years of serving her community, Ayite has seen the benefits of community-based partnerships: Before she started as a community medicine distributor, says Ayite, “mothers did not deliver in health facilities, but now they do. Mothers did not go for antenatal care despite risks involved, but now they do.” Ayite estimates that 45% of women now go to hospitals for delivery services and postnatal care.  With the trend toward using health facilities, women now receive nets to prevent malaria during and after pregnancy. 

Ayite’s compassion for work among community members has benefited so many, in so many ways. She is most proud of her work in mobilizing mothers to go for postnatal care, immunizing children under five, and making sure nets are being used.  “If we shall continue, gradually,” she says, “there will be a change in the community.”