The innovation if the Joyce has brought happness to hundreds of men and women as they take home babies
after thhe success treatments through assisted reproductive technology.Uganda is now a referral for many
African countries, and we expect a significant transformation in infertility treatment in Africa.
Joyce fertility is challenging programes with in the mainstream health arrangments.
Doctors who felt that their skills cannot be bought here and moved to other countries are amazed to
see the reality. Patients are asking for the quality services and Doctors are feeling secured with Jobs.
Dear Rita and the Team of Joyce,
You are really doing a tremendous work to help the infertile people in Uganda and Africa at large.
Me as a patient am really proud of you. The courage and the commitment you have comparing to our culture in Africa is really unique. Joyce Organisation really deserves the award. Long live Joyce.
I have come a cross your work through the News Paper, this prompted me to follow up on your Website news. Your approach to Health issues will unfold many silent voices that were not featuring anywhere in the planning of Health. Continue in the struggle.
Dear Rita and Joyce team,
I have learned a lot of thing from your work and activities for infertility awareness in your coutry. I hope your role is becoming more important to support for infertile people in not only Uganda but also African coutries.
Dear Rita and the team of Joyce,
I have met Rita at iCSi meetings over the past few years and I think she is a wonderful person. She is the strong voice for people who suffer infertility in silence in Uganda and other African countries. Her work is powerful and her work deserves to be recognized. I wish you and your team continued success.
Helen Browne
Chairperson NISIG
Ireland
I met Rita Sembuya this year at ICSI meeting in Lyon, where she described her amazing work helping infertile couples in Uganda.
It seems to me that Joyce's activity is complete, multifocused, really helpful!
I appreciate very much Joyce Fertility's activity about infertility in a country where it's birth control the priority. Congratulation for the very interesting financial model and for all the projects.
I think it's very important to fight together stigma about infertility and assisted conception all over the world.
Best wishes, dera Rita!
Ofra Balaban chairperson - CHEN - Patient Fertility assosciation, Israel
Folowing the initiative of Rita Semboya we Uganda and Israel colaborating in mutual projects since the begining. Sincwe I met Mrs. Sembya for the fisrt time I knew that projects will be operated and the first IVF child will be born soon. Our mutual effotrs succeeded and in Uganda thanks to Rita there is IVF treatment, THere is HOPE for infertile couples. She is the hope of so many couples and"mom" for so many newbrn IVF children in Ugnda that she is entitled to be ACHANGMAKER since she is one.
I was recently introduced to Mrs Rita Sembuya through the iCSi, and I must say I am overwhelmed by the tremendous support she has given to us in Nigeria, where the idea of an Infertility Support Group is relatively new. She has been a pillar of encouragement, always ready to help and advice. I believe that she is doing a great job in Uganda, and Africa as a whole and that her work deserves to be recognised. Keep up the good work, Ritah!
Thanks to Rita's innovation, the Joyce Fertility Support Centre Uganda which has seen Ugandan health professionals adopting new Advanced Technologies in treating infertility and the international health professionals are picking interest in Uganda. I am seeing Joyce changing the society's attitude towards infertility which was regarded as a curse due to lack of knowledge. But Rita comes out and says infertility is a medical problem which can be treated. Patients of infertility were stigmatized, they could go to witch doctors secretly, but now after getting to know that infertility is not their own making that they might have done something wrong in order to be infertile, they visit medical doctors and are free to participate in their treatments confidently with the empowerment of Joyce. They are treated, they can open up to the public..
In Uganda, whenever there was a tragedy of children being lost, some of the police officers could start warning the society to be careful with the infertile women; they might be the ones responsible for the disappearance of their children!
But now due to the public awareness about infertility, the society understands this problem.
Thanks to Joyce for being there for such people who were vulnerable and did not have a say in the society. Some of them are now proud parents, others are still trying and some have adopted to live a free life without children but happily.
Bravo Joyce!
Rose Nambasa
Administrative Officer
Joyce Fertility Support Centre Uganda (JFSCU)
Rita and all her colleagues at Joyce have done fantastic work in what is a very sensitive subject for many and an extremely physical and emotional illness to suffer from, I congratulate them!
Joyce Fertility Support Center is an efficient organization on assisting patients with the problem of infertility. It has a great role on empowering patients with the knowledge of infertility and it advices patients with possible treatments. So believe that Joyce Fertility Support Center should be encouraged in their works to help more people with infertility problems in Uganda and in the continent.
The iCSi Patient Leader Community (iCSi) congratulates Rita Sembuya and her colleagues at Joyce on their effective, persistent commitment to bringing hope to African people who are experiencing difficulties conceiving. Through earned respect and building confidence, with minimal resources, Joyce has successfully been able to build partnerships with medical and community stakeholders to make necessary medical treatment available to enable couples to have a family. The inspired leadership of Ms Sembuya has captured the attention of high level stakeholders seeking to understand the needs of people experiencing infertility in African countries. These include the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE). Ms Sembuya was recognised by iCSi in awarding her its 2007 Patient Leader Award for her outstanding contribution in Africa and internationally. We wish her success in securing necessary support to ensure this work can grow.
Rita & Joyce Fertility make almost miraculous changes through their hard work, dedication and tireless efforts. I know well how difficult it is in Canada to make the changes needed; I cannot imagine how Joyce Fertility gets sooooooooooo much done with so little in the way of resources. Rita is now known nationally and internationally - she is beating the odds all the time.
Dale Carnegie said "Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all" - he must have talking about Rita!
The innovation of Joyce fertility centre has brought hope towards realisation of the right to health escepecially in Uganda and Africa at large . The work enhances the right to social security and the need to shift from thinking about children as a source of social security but rather as individuals with rights and as such women need to find their own lives with or without children. No need to use withcraft , endulge in unprotected sex with in laws for the sex of trying to get children.
The work of Joyce has great relevance to both the urban and rural woman. This is because in rural areas women go an extra mile to try and have children to please the clan, for security even when it it fails it is taboo for the woman. Never the man.
Joyce Fertility Centre has accomplished a tremendous amount since it was founded by Rita. A dedicated team has ensured that women's voices are heard in Uganda and other African countries, and they have dared to raise and deal with difficult and taboo subjects such as infertility and endometriosis in particular - a much overlooked disease.
We need such organisations to speak up about women's benign health issues - health issues that affect women in such a profound way, and which more often than not can be dealt with if treated in time. The awareness, which Joyce Fertility is raising, is paramount to this effort.
Endometriosis.org - the global forum for news and information in endometriosis - is proud to be associated with Joyce Fertility and applaud them for the work that they do. I wish that there were many more organisations out there like Joyce.
With respect,
Lone Hummelshoj
Publisher/Editor-in-chief, www.endometriosis.org
and
Secretary General, World Endometriosis Society
They say a journey of 1000 miles starts with one step and thats exactly how i can discribe Joyce Fertility Centre.
After all the awareness they had carried out in the previous years, i think their efforts have been paid positively. For starters, The whole nation woke up one Sunday in 2005 with an alarming headline in the Government Papers :reading "Museveni Woos Back Scientists" this followed the launch of Uganda's very first IVF Hospital by the President of the republic of Uganda.The Hospital is headed by Dr.Tamale Ssali, this was a score for Joyce Fertility Centre considering he had been wooed by them and the fact he first carried out his work from the Centre's backyard.As they say the rest is history and today in Uganda, many babies are being born by this method and more and more conferences are being held as doctors are being involved.
Not only is Rita Sembuya bringing a previously highly marginalised group back to the mainstream health systesm, her work is also transforming the way we understand and deliver health. Her work is redefining the doctor-patient relationship turning it into a more democratic and more of a partnership. I have witnessed first had how she has slowly transformed her personal frustrations with the health system into a national health movement that has rallied patients and global health experts to focus on a largely hidden problem. This is why we are so proud that she is an Ashoka Fellow. To read more about Rita's work (her idea, the problem she is addressing, the strategy and about her personal life), see her Ashoka Fellow profile at http://www.ashoka.org/node/2473
Abu Musuuza
Change Manager
Ashoka East Africa
"It does not matter whether you think you can or cannot, either way you are right!"
The enormous successes presented by the Joyce model is a reflection of the genuine attempts of creating equal oppotunities for your everyday African people through demstifying the current health challenges. Clearly the current results speak for themselves :One of promise for a liberated African woman. A vigorous media campaign and perhaps Partnerships support from local and global stakeholders will go a long way in fulfilling this dream. Denis
I have worked with Rita Sembuya and her team in Joyce Fertility Support Centre-Uganda for the last six years. I have come to know her personally as a woman of great strength. We look up to Joyce Support Centre as our pillar. Her support and encouragement for us in Kenya to keep moving with different struggles, creating more awareness and information on where to seek services to the public brought the first successful IVF births last year in Kenya. We continue to work closely together linking patient to health providers from both countries.
The face of infertility in East Africa has changed.
Joyce Fertility has become an epitome of the much needed develpment in the experiencing as well as management of infertility in the African Continent.
In Africa infertility is still experienced as one of the most painful psycological and sociological experiences in family life. It is indeed largely still regarded as the dormain of the herbalists and faithhealers much to the neglect of the affected memebers of society by nations and all relevant stakeholders. Patients have been largely left to "deal with" it by themselves, so to speak while society too has added its own salt to injury by their inability to accept the condition of childlessness.
Your work is inspiring us as well as creating the much needed tracks in which we can follow as we seek to spread the message to our parts of the continent. To all Joyce members, know that what you are doing is not just benefiting Ugandan communities, but that you are also in the process creating deciples who in your footsteps are following to bring change to the whole of the continent and beyond.
We at the Endometriosis Association have worked with outstanding women leaders all over the world for 27-1/2 years. Women everywhere are strong—still it takes a particularly strong, wise, and thoughtful leader to help women find their true place in society and in the medical community. Rita Sembuya is one of those outstanding leaders and very much deserves to win this award.
We have worked with Rita since 2003 and have been pleased to see her quickly grasp that fertility need not be a stigmatized, taboo health problem and that patients, particularly women, are usually in the best position to voice their concerns and to change the healthcare system to one that meets their needs. We have also been so impressed with her understanding of the role of diseases, such as endometriosis, related to infertility as well as to environmental concerns. In short, with such outstanding leaders, we will hopefully reach a point in the near future where we understand that fertility is a reflection of health, that infertility can be caused by environmental contaminants as well as a poor health environment, and that it can, in some cases, be prevented.
We would particularly like to be sure that Rita and Joyce Fertility Support Center are recognized since there is a particularly pressing need in Africa. While we have organized all over the world, Africa has presented unique challenges—Rita has risen above those! May her work and those of her colleagues receive this recognition which will help propel it even faster.
Sincerely,
Mary Lou Ballweg
President/Executive Director
Endometriosis Association
Comments
The innovation if the Joyce has brought happness to hundreds of men and women as they take home babies
after thhe success treatments through assisted reproductive technology.Uganda is now a referral for many
African countries, and we expect a significant transformation in infertility treatment in Africa.
Mrs. Consolata Ombogo.
Network for Joyce.
Joyce fertility is challenging programes with in the mainstream health arrangments.
Doctors who felt that their skills cannot be bought here and moved to other countries are amazed to
see the reality. Patients are asking for the quality services and Doctors are feeling secured with Jobs.
Isiah Logonda
Field volunteer
Joyce.
Dear Rita and the Team of Joyce,
You are really doing a tremendous work to help the infertile people in Uganda and Africa at large.
Me as a patient am really proud of you. The courage and the commitment you have comparing to our culture in Africa is really unique. Joyce Organisation really deserves the award. Long live Joyce.
Connie Ogola
Jb Computing Institute
I have come a cross your work through the News Paper, this prompted me to follow up on your Website news. Your approach to Health issues will unfold many silent voices that were not featuring anywhere in the planning of Health. Continue in the struggle.
Dear Rita and Joyce team,
I have learned a lot of thing from your work and activities for infertility awareness in your coutry. I hope your role is becoming more important to support for infertile people in not only Uganda but also African coutries.
Yukari Semba
The Friends of Finrrage
Dear Rita and the team of Joyce,
I have met Rita at iCSi meetings over the past few years and I think she is a wonderful person. She is the strong voice for people who suffer infertility in silence in Uganda and other African countries. Her work is powerful and her work deserves to be recognized. I wish you and your team continued success.
Helen Browne
Chairperson NISIG
Ireland
I met Rita Sembuya this year at ICSI meeting in Lyon, where she described her amazing work helping infertile couples in Uganda.
It seems to me that Joyce's activity is complete, multifocused, really helpful!
Good word Rita!
Rossella Bartolucci
Chair
Sos Infertilità Onlus, Italy
http://www.sosinfertilita.net
I appreciate very much Joyce Fertility's activity about infertility in a country where it's birth control the priority. Congratulation for the very interesting financial model and for all the projects.
I think it's very important to fight together stigma about infertility and assisted conception all over the world.
Best wishes, dera Rita!
Ofra Balaban chairperson - CHEN - Patient Fertility assosciation, Israel
Folowing the initiative of Rita Semboya we Uganda and Israel colaborating in mutual projects since the begining. Sincwe I met Mrs. Sembya for the fisrt time I knew that projects will be operated and the first IVF child will be born soon. Our mutual effotrs succeeded and in Uganda thanks to Rita there is IVF treatment, THere is HOPE for infertile couples. She is the hope of so many couples and"mom" for so many newbrn IVF children in Ugnda that she is entitled to be ACHANGMAKER since she is one.
I was recently introduced to Mrs Rita Sembuya through the iCSi, and I must say I am overwhelmed by the tremendous support she has given to us in Nigeria, where the idea of an Infertility Support Group is relatively new. She has been a pillar of encouragement, always ready to help and advice. I believe that she is doing a great job in Uganda, and Africa as a whole and that her work deserves to be recognised. Keep up the good work, Ritah!
Thanks to Rita's innovation, the Joyce Fertility Support Centre Uganda which has seen Ugandan health professionals adopting new Advanced Technologies in treating infertility and the international health professionals are picking interest in Uganda. I am seeing Joyce changing the society's attitude towards infertility which was regarded as a curse due to lack of knowledge. But Rita comes out and says infertility is a medical problem which can be treated. Patients of infertility were stigmatized, they could go to witch doctors secretly, but now after getting to know that infertility is not their own making that they might have done something wrong in order to be infertile, they visit medical doctors and are free to participate in their treatments confidently with the empowerment of Joyce. They are treated, they can open up to the public..
In Uganda, whenever there was a tragedy of children being lost, some of the police officers could start warning the society to be careful with the infertile women; they might be the ones responsible for the disappearance of their children!
But now due to the public awareness about infertility, the society understands this problem.
Thanks to Joyce for being there for such people who were vulnerable and did not have a say in the society. Some of them are now proud parents, others are still trying and some have adopted to live a free life without children but happily.
Bravo Joyce!
Rose Nambasa
Administrative Officer
Joyce Fertility Support Centre Uganda (JFSCU)
Rita and all her colleagues at Joyce have done fantastic work in what is a very sensitive subject for many and an extremely physical and emotional illness to suffer from, I congratulate them!
Joyce Fertility Support Center is an efficient organization on assisting patients with the problem of infertility. It has a great role on empowering patients with the knowledge of infertility and it advices patients with possible treatments. So believe that Joyce Fertility Support Center should be encouraged in their works to help more people with infertility problems in Uganda and in the continent.
Sara
The iCSi Patient Leader Community (iCSi) congratulates Rita Sembuya and her colleagues at Joyce on their effective, persistent commitment to bringing hope to African people who are experiencing difficulties conceiving. Through earned respect and building confidence, with minimal resources, Joyce has successfully been able to build partnerships with medical and community stakeholders to make necessary medical treatment available to enable couples to have a family. The inspired leadership of Ms Sembuya has captured the attention of high level stakeholders seeking to understand the needs of people experiencing infertility in African countries. These include the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE). Ms Sembuya was recognised by iCSi in awarding her its 2007 Patient Leader Award for her outstanding contribution in Africa and internationally. We wish her success in securing necessary support to ensure this work can grow.
Rita & Joyce Fertility make almost miraculous changes through their hard work, dedication and tireless efforts. I know well how difficult it is in Canada to make the changes needed; I cannot imagine how Joyce Fertility gets sooooooooooo much done with so little in the way of resources. Rita is now known nationally and internationally - she is beating the odds all the time.
Dale Carnegie said "Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all" - he must have talking about Rita!
Rita, you go girl!
The innovation of Joyce fertility centre has brought hope towards realisation of the right to health escepecially in Uganda and Africa at large . The work enhances the right to social security and the need to shift from thinking about children as a source of social security but rather as individuals with rights and as such women need to find their own lives with or without children. No need to use withcraft , endulge in unprotected sex with in laws for the sex of trying to get children.
The work of Joyce has great relevance to both the urban and rural woman. This is because in rural areas women go an extra mile to try and have children to please the clan, for security even when it it fails it is taboo for the woman. Never the man.
Joyce Fertility Centre has accomplished a tremendous amount since it was founded by Rita. A dedicated team has ensured that women's voices are heard in Uganda and other African countries, and they have dared to raise and deal with difficult and taboo subjects such as infertility and endometriosis in particular - a much overlooked disease.
We need such organisations to speak up about women's benign health issues - health issues that affect women in such a profound way, and which more often than not can be dealt with if treated in time. The awareness, which Joyce Fertility is raising, is paramount to this effort.
Endometriosis.org - the global forum for news and information in endometriosis - is proud to be associated with Joyce Fertility and applaud them for the work that they do. I wish that there were many more organisations out there like Joyce.
With respect,
Lone Hummelshoj
Publisher/Editor-in-chief, www.endometriosis.org
and
Secretary General, World Endometriosis Society
They say a journey of 1000 miles starts with one step and thats exactly how i can discribe Joyce Fertility Centre.
After all the awareness they had carried out in the previous years, i think their efforts have been paid positively. For starters, The whole nation woke up one Sunday in 2005 with an alarming headline in the Government Papers :reading "Museveni Woos Back Scientists" this followed the launch of Uganda's very first IVF Hospital by the President of the republic of Uganda.The Hospital is headed by Dr.Tamale Ssali, this was a score for Joyce Fertility Centre considering he had been wooed by them and the fact he first carried out his work from the Centre's backyard.As they say the rest is history and today in Uganda, many babies are being born by this method and more and more conferences are being held as doctors are being involved.
Stephen Jr.S
Director/Editor
SeSt holdings Ltd/ Media Markt
Not only is Rita Sembuya bringing a previously highly marginalised group back to the mainstream health systesm, her work is also transforming the way we understand and deliver health. Her work is redefining the doctor-patient relationship turning it into a more democratic and more of a partnership. I have witnessed first had how she has slowly transformed her personal frustrations with the health system into a national health movement that has rallied patients and global health experts to focus on a largely hidden problem. This is why we are so proud that she is an Ashoka Fellow. To read more about Rita's work (her idea, the problem she is addressing, the strategy and about her personal life), see her Ashoka Fellow profile at http://www.ashoka.org/node/2473
Abu Musuuza
Change Manager
Ashoka East Africa
"It does not matter whether you think you can or cannot, either way you are right!"
The enormous successes presented by the Joyce model is a reflection of the genuine attempts of creating equal oppotunities for your everyday African people through demstifying the current health challenges. Clearly the current results speak for themselves :One of promise for a liberated African woman. A vigorous media campaign and perhaps Partnerships support from local and global stakeholders will go a long way in fulfilling this dream. Denis
I have worked with Rita Sembuya and her team in Joyce Fertility Support Centre-Uganda for the last six years. I have come to know her personally as a woman of great strength. We look up to Joyce Support Centre as our pillar. Her support and encouragement for us in Kenya to keep moving with different struggles, creating more awareness and information on where to seek services to the public brought the first successful IVF births last year in Kenya. We continue to work closely together linking patient to health providers from both countries.
The face of infertility in East Africa has changed.
Joyce Fertility has become an epitome of the much needed develpment in the experiencing as well as management of infertility in the African Continent.
In Africa infertility is still experienced as one of the most painful psycological and sociological experiences in family life. It is indeed largely still regarded as the dormain of the herbalists and faithhealers much to the neglect of the affected memebers of society by nations and all relevant stakeholders. Patients have been largely left to "deal with" it by themselves, so to speak while society too has added its own salt to injury by their inability to accept the condition of childlessness.
Your work is inspiring us as well as creating the much needed tracks in which we can follow as we seek to spread the message to our parts of the continent. To all Joyce members, know that what you are doing is not just benefiting Ugandan communities, but that you are also in the process creating deciples who in your footsteps are following to bring change to the whole of the continent and beyond.
EVELYN MADZIBA
THE FERTILITY NETWORK OF ZIMBABWE
We at the Endometriosis Association have worked with outstanding women leaders all over the world for 27-1/2 years. Women everywhere are strong—still it takes a particularly strong, wise, and thoughtful leader to help women find their true place in society and in the medical community. Rita Sembuya is one of those outstanding leaders and very much deserves to win this award.
We have worked with Rita since 2003 and have been pleased to see her quickly grasp that fertility need not be a stigmatized, taboo health problem and that patients, particularly women, are usually in the best position to voice their concerns and to change the healthcare system to one that meets their needs. We have also been so impressed with her understanding of the role of diseases, such as endometriosis, related to infertility as well as to environmental concerns. In short, with such outstanding leaders, we will hopefully reach a point in the near future where we understand that fertility is a reflection of health, that infertility can be caused by environmental contaminants as well as a poor health environment, and that it can, in some cases, be prevented.
We would particularly like to be sure that Rita and Joyce Fertility Support Center are recognized since there is a particularly pressing need in Africa. While we have organized all over the world, Africa has presented unique challenges—Rita has risen above those! May her work and those of her colleagues receive this recognition which will help propel it even faster.
Sincerely,
Mary Lou Ballweg
President/Executive Director
Endometriosis Association
MLB:re
I saw a seed being planted. Joyce organization has brought happiness in the families of many people. There is hope for many more.
Scientist have returned to work here and to create more jobs.
This is because, Joyce organization is creating informed communities who in turn demand for the quality services that the scientists provide.
C.C Sembuya
Managing Director
Sembule Steel Mills Ltd.
Post new comment