Uganda News

The President of Uganda, His Excellency Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has highlighted the critical role communities play in managing and responding to disease outbreaks in Africa especially in resource-constrained settings. “Train communities to look out for these outbreaks because community participation is very important,” he said at the opening of the 4th High-level Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) meeting that was held in Kampala last week 

Following the confirmation of a case of Marburg Virus Disease (MVD) in Kween district Eastern Uganda by Ministry of Health (MoH) and the activation of the National Response Team, the WHO Rapid Response team from the country office was able to reach the epicentre within 48 hours and is currently supporting national and district authorities to contain the outbreak. 

The World Health Organization (WHO) in collaboration with the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) supported Uganda to design a harmonized, detailed and realistic road-map of activities to improve collaboration between animal health and the public health sector, in a three-day meeting convened at the Sheraton Hotel in Kampala. The roadmap will enable Uganda to prevent, detect and respond to zoonotic disease outbreaks. The roadmap highlighted the importance of International Health Regulations (IHR 2005) and the role of WHO, on the mandate of the OIE.

The World Health Organization Health Emergencies program (WHE) will revitalize the Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) Taskforce that will guide use and scale-up of the revised IDSR guidelines and tools in the WHO African Region.  

Experts from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Kenya, South Sudan and Uganda convened in Entebbe, Uganda, to identify and discuss opportunities to strengthen cross-border interventions for guinea worm disease eradication.  Participants mapped a joint action plan for 2018 to strengthen surveillance, communication and coordination for guinea worm disease eradication. They further charted a strategy to strengthen cross-border surveillance among refugees to prevent the disease from spilling over to refugee host-communities.

The World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa (WHO-AFRO) in collaboration with United Nations Children’s Education Fund (UNICEF) and United States Agency for International Development (USAID), convened a four-day meeting in Uganda aimed at improving Neonatal Health (NNH) in Eastern and Southern Africa.  

The Ministry of Health with support from the World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) conducted a three-day preventative house-to-house polio immunization campaign reaching 5,570,000 children below the age of five in the 73 selected high-risk districts in Uganda. 

The Ministry of Health with support from World Health Organization (WHO) convened a five-day meeting to develop a National Action Plan for Health Security (NAPHS) for Uganda.  The development of the NAPHS comes after a Joint External Evaluation (JEE) of Uganda’s readiness to readiness to respond to public health emergencies, which was done in May 2017 by WHO and other partners.