In February 2025, the UK-PHRST collaborated with the WHO Uganda country office, WHO AFRO and Community Readiness and Resilience unit of WHO Headquarters, the Ministry of Health Uganda and others to conduct a training on Ebola disease detection and management for Community Health Worker representatives from Kole, Wakiso, and Mukono districts.
Image credits: WHO Uganda
Workshop aim
The aim of the workshop was to:
- Progress the co-development of the Ebola Community Health Workers' curriculum
- Enhance Uganda’s ability to prevent, detect, and respond to health emergencies
- Strengthen Uganda's response to the viral haemorrhagic fever outbreak occurring in the country at the time
Workshop highlights
The exercise underscored various challenges, such as economic downturns, lockdown-related impacts, system strains, public anxiety, and misinformation. It also highlighted the significant roles of community volunteers, health workers, wider sector organisations as well as government entities in outbreak and pandemic response.
The UK-PHRST's role
This exercise in Uganda builds on the UK-PHRST’s previous successful collaboration and simulation exercise in Ghana. In partnership across three levels of WHO (HQ, regional and country), UK-PHRST have co-developed Community Protection guidance, checklists, curriculum and methods for other countries managing outbreaks, such as MPox in the DRC.
Bringing this workshop to Uganda has further strengthened our partnerships and reinforces the benefit of these exercises, as learnings are relevant for the public health outbreak responses for communities in many countries.
Image credits: WHO Uganda
| Dr Claire Bayntun, UK-PHRST Head of Capacity Strengthening said: “We are delighted to have contributed our technical expertise to this community protection workshop alongside the World Health Organization at global, regional, and local levels, the Ministry of Health in Uganda and other partners. We hope this will help ensure Ugandan local communities are even better prepared for outbreaks." |