Abstract
Uganda is considered as a ‘hot spot’ for emerging and re-emerging infectious disease epidemics. The country has experienced several epidemics including; Ebola, Marburg, plague, Rift Valley fever, yellow fever and Crimean Congo haemorrhagic fever. Epidemics overwhelm health systems, devastate economies and cause global health insecurity. These public health challenges arising from the interaction of humans-animals-environment link require a holistic approach referred to as One Health (OH). OH is the collaborative effort of multiple disciplines working locally, nationally, and globally, to attain optimal health for people, animals, and the environment. Given its situation, Uganda has embraced the OH approach in order to be able to predict, prepare and respond to these public health challenges effectively, though still in infancy stages. In this paper, we present major achievements and challenges of OH implementation, and make recommendations for systematic and sustainable OH implementation. Achievements include: formation of the National One Health (NOH) platform with a Memorandum of Understanding between sectors; a national priority list of zoonotic diseases, the NOH Strategic Plan and a One Health communication strategy to strengthen engagement across sectors and stakeholders. There have also been efforts to integrate OH in academia. The challenges are related to inadequate; coordination across sectors, government commitment, advocacy and awareness creation and research. For systematic and sustainable OH engagements, urgent efforts should be made through government support to address current and related future challenges.
Highlights
About 75% of newly emerging infectious diseases and 60% of all human infections are of animal origin [1]
While the One Health (OH) approach was not yet institutionalized, Uganda has had some successful multi-sectoral disease response initiatives in the past. These initiatives include: (i) The Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (HIV/the human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)) epidemic in the 1980s was put under control through strong political leadership and multi-sectoral collaboration including civil society, other sectors participation; (ii) Uganda established a Veterinary Public Health division within the Ministry of Health (MoH) in the early 1980s
With support from The U.S Agency for International Development (USAID), One Health Central and Eastern Africa (OHCEA) focused on strengthening training and educational programs in universities to create a multidisciplinary workforce with skills and competencies needed to effectively respond to emerging pandemic threats in the Eastern, Central and Western African region [31] which is considered a “hot spot” for emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases
Summary
About 75% of newly emerging infectious diseases and 60% of all human infections are of animal origin (zoonoses) [1]. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one or more new infectious diseases have emerged each year since the 1970s [2] This has resulted from closer proximity of animals and humans than ever before due to several factors such as: population growth, urbanization, advances in transport and animal industry, deforestation and climate change [3,4,5]. This close interaction has led to increased transmission and quick spread of diseases from animals to humans [6,7], resulting into epidemics that can potentially overwhelm health systems, and devastate economies [8,9], lead to morbidity and mortality of both animals and humans [10].
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