Gov’t, partners enhance skills of public health professionals

By George Mangula

One of the biggest challenges to health in Uganda is delayed animal disease alert to call for immediate response. Worse still, experts say a great number of diseases that affect human beings – at least 75 percent, originate from animals and if not addressed promptly, increase the chances of such diseases spreading very fast among animals or crossing from animals to humans.

Against the above background and in a country like Uganda, which has witnessed many disease outbreaks such as Ebola, Anthrax and Rift Valley Fever, human and animal health systems can be immensely supported to effectively respond to outbreaks through timely and rapid surveillance. Consequently, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) together with the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF), with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) recently organised trainings to reinforce the skills and knowledge of district surveillance officers in Uganda.

The two trainings for District Surveillance Focal Persons were: ‘Animal Disease Surveillance for One Health Approach’ and ‘Good Emergency Management Practices (GEMP)’ were held this month in Entebbe, respectively, and attracted 40 participants including district veterinary officers from 30 districts in Uganda and representatives from the public and private sectors. These among others, included MAAIF, Ministry of Health, Uganda Meat Producers’ Cooperative Union, Uganda Wildlife Authority, Alpha Zoetis and National Drug Authority.

Topics discussed during the trainings included: principles, knowledge and skills in participatory epidemiology; one health emergency preparedness, prevention, detection and recovery actions; outbreak investigation; emergency phases (peace time, alert, emergency and recovery) and rapid response to animal health emergencies. Participants also benefitted from practical sessions and a field visit to the National Animal Disease Diagnostics and Epidemiology Centre (NADDEC) where they were appraised on laboratory and epidemiology best practices.

Speaking at the closing ceremony, Dr Ann Rose Ademun, the  Commissioner for Animal Health and Chief Veterinary Officer at MAAIF dislcosed that the two trainings were timely and will greatly contribute to enhancing knowledge and skills of animal health human resources to do better surveillance and reporting; thus promoting effective control and management of disease outbreaks in the country.

“At one time, reporting of disease outbreaks in Uganda were at 99 percent; meaning that only one district was not reporting. However, for many reasons such as low motivation of staff and limited resources, reporting dipped to about 13 percent”, she said.

“However, through intensive sensitization and support from partners such as FAO, this figure rose to 20 percent and now stands at about 46 percent” she added, noting that only 26 out of 136 districts in Uganda are effectively reporting cases of disease outbreaks.

Dr Ademun urged the participants to use the newly acquired knowledge and skills to empower their colleagues in neighboring districts to sustain and increase the level of reporting through networking and information sharing.

Officials said the trainings were part of fulfilment of recommendations made by the Surveillance Evaluation Tool (SET) developed by FAO and MAAIF in 2018, to increase surveillance, detection and response to zoonotic disease outbreaks in Uganda.

According to Dr John Bosco Tingiira, the District Veterinary Officer Kiboga District said: “The district which is located in Uganda’s cattle corridor has very porous borders and this makes is susceptible to outbreaks such as those it grappled with in 2017 and 2018”. “Worse still, the district had poor surveillance and slow reporting and this delayed response to the outbreaks,” he added.

However, Dr. Tingiira was optimistic that the knowledge and tools on reporting which he got from the training would greatly boost the district’s capacity.

Speaking at the training, Dr Sam Okuthe, the Team Leader of FAO’s Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases (ECTAD) in Uganda on behalf of the FAO representative in Uganda, Antonio Querido, called on the participants to use their knowledge to develop key arguments to advocate for investing in emergency preparedness, recognizing risks and prioritizing emergency response.

In addition, Dr Elma Zanamwe, an Emergency Management Specialist and Project Coordinator– Strengthening International Responses to TADs at FAO in Rome, reiterated FAO’s commitment to supporting the Government of Uganda to promote veterinary, public health, and environmental services adoption of GEMP principles in Uganda, to guide effective response to animal health emergencies.

Through ECTAD and with support from USAID’s Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA), FAO is supporting countries in Africa to address zoonotic diseases and animal health. The intervention aims at addressing the problem of emerging and re-emerging high impact zoonoses.

In Uganda, this project focuses on priority zoonotic diseases including anthrax, zoonotic influenza viruses, hemorrhagic fevers (Ebola, RVF, CCHF and Marburg), brucellosis, trypanosomiasis, plague, and rabies.

FAO is specifically supporting: Surveillance and Response to Zoonotic Diseases, Work Force Development, Biosafety and Biosecurity and National Laboratory Systems among the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) action packages.