A team of eight volunteers from a Harpenden charity visited Uganda last week to catch up on the progress of their new maternity centre.

The money for the centre, which aims to deliver 1,500 babies each year, was raised through generous donations from locals.

Uganda has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world and a woman in Uganda is 56 times more likely to die in childbirth compared with the UK.

Harpenden Spotlight on Africa has been running as a charity since 2006, and have made a huge impact in Mbale Uganda with projects in health, education, clean water and economic empowerment.

Hefin Rees, one of the founding members of the charity, said: “We would like to thank the people of Harpenden, and the surrounding area, for their generosity over the years in enabling these great projects to be delivered so successfully”.

During this trip, the charity also celebrated the 10th anniversary of the first primary school. The local community showed its appreciation, with over 2,000 people in attendance at the ceremony.

Hefin added: “We are 75 per cent completed on the construction of the new maternity centre. Thanks to some very generous funding from the Nick Maughan Foundation we will be able to functionalise the centre so that it can deliver very high quality medical services to the poorest of communities in Uganda.

"It will be fully functioning within the next few months. I would like to particularly thank Nick for coming out to Uganda to visit our projects and for agreeing to make such a generous donation to the maternity centre, our health clinic and a new secondary school we are going to start building in June.”