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159 results found
Research paper
Changing perceptions about COVID-19 risk and adherence to preventive strategies in Uganda: Evidence from an online mixed-methods survey
As the pandemic drags on and prevention policies double down in the more deadly second and third waves, change in risk perceptions will be expected as economic and social anxiety increase. This study assesses the determinants of changes in perceptions…
Research paper
Gendered care at the margins: Ebola, gender, and caregiving practices in Uganda’s border districts
In July 2019, Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was declared a public health emergency of international concern and neighbouring countries were put on high alert. This paper examines the intersections of gender, caregiving, and livelihood practices in…
Research paper
Healthworker preparedness for COVID-19 management and implementation experiences: a mixed methods study in Uganda’s refugee-hosting districts
How health systems have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic has received some attention; however, less is known about healthcare for refugee populations during this period. The negative impact of COVID-19 on population health outcomes raises critical questions on health…
Research paper
A Double Stress: The Mental Health Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic Among People Living with HIV in Rakai, Uganda
The COVID-19 pandemic presents complex, multidimensional challenges to maintaining the health and wellbeing of individuals worldwide. Mental health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic for people living with HIV are poorly understood, especially in low-income settings. The study team conducted qualitative…
Policy document
Uganda National Technical Guidelines for IDSR, Third Edition
Uganda Ministry of Health National Technical Guidelines for Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response, Third Edition (September 2021). These official guidelines set out the Government of Uganda’s policies and strategy concerning public health surveillance, early warning and response.
Background report
“This is your disease”: Dynamics of local authority and NGO responses to Covid-19 in South Sudan
Drawing on interviews and observations conducted in South Sudan in 2020-21, this report explores how South Sudanese NGOs and local government actors responded to the Covid-19 pandemic. The authors argue that unfilled local government positions undermined the Covid response in…
Research paper
Lives Interrupted: Navigating Hardship During COVID-19 Provides Lessons in Solidarity and Visibility for Mobile Young People in South Africa and Uganda
The COVID-19 pandemic has upended assumptions about livelihood security. The authors examine data from young women and men in South Africa and young female sex workers in Uganda to explore the inequalities and hardships experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic and…
Research paper
Hidden Tales of Ebola: Airing the Forgotten Voices of Ugandan “Ebola Nurses”
Uganda experienced three Ebola outbreaks between 2000 and 2012, the largest and most destructive occurred in the Gulu region in 2000. This outbreak occurred during the rainy season when malaria rates were highest, thus complicating the diagnosis. As the outbreak…
Research paper
Fieldwork through the Zoomiverse: Sensing Uganda in a Time of Immobility
With the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, research collaborations that involved multiple sites or institutions were challenged by travel restrictions and the switch to online communication. This article is a reflection by two longtime collaborators, Richard Vokes and Gertrude Atukunda.…
Research paper
Deadly secret: situating the unknowing and knowing of the source of the Ebola epidemic in Northern Uganda
This article critically examines the unknowing of the source of the Ebola epidemic in Northern Uganda, in 2000/1, by asking how this unknowing has been achieved and has shaped the disease situation. This article follows the author’s informants’ explanation that…
Research paper
Experiences of persons in COVID-19 institutional quarantine in Uganda: a qualitative study
Quarantine has been adopted as a key public health measure to support the control of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in many countries Uganda adopted institutional quarantine for individuals suspected of exposure to severe COVID-19 to be placed in institutions…
Research paper
Is we they? A cross-cultural study of responses to COVID-19 updates in Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda
This article delineates the material relations, routines and sensorial responses inhabited by people in Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. It grounds views on a discourse of behavioural change while exploring how Ugandans, Kenyans…
Research paper
Who is watching? Refugee protection during a pandemic-responses from Uganda and South Africa
Reflecting on the first 6 months of the pandemic responses in terms of refugee protection, Uganda and South Africa have taken diverging pathways. South Africa used the pandemic to start building a border fence on the border with Zimbabwe, initially…
Research paper
Institutional vulnerabilities, COVID-19, resilience mechanisms and societal relationships in developing countries
COVID-19 pandemic challenges could be utilised as an opportunity to reform government institutions to develop resilience measures that would potentially meet contemporary and future challenges. This article highlights that the current approach of institutions has failed to meet societal need.…
Research paper
COVID-19 and Its Related Stigma A Qualitative Study Among Survivors in Kampala, Uganda
COVID-19-related stigma is gradually becoming a global problem among COVID-19 survivors with deleterious effects on quality of life. However, this social problem has received little attention in research and policy. This study aimed at exploring the COVID-19-related stigma among survivors…
Blog
The Logic of Contesting States During a Crisis: Revelations from Uganda’s COVID-19 Fight
This piece examines state legitimacy during the COVID-19 pandemic in Uganda. It examines various contestations to this legitimacy, such as the Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST) student strike. The strike reveals how state institutions condition(ed) public indifference with…
Blog
“Escaping from Quarantine” from Quarantined: My Ordeal in Uganda’s Covid-19 Isolation Centers
Ugandan intellectual and philosopher, Jimmy Spire Ssentongo has painted a behind-the-scenes picture of how the Ugandan state handled the coronavirus disease. While the Ugandan president praised self and staff for putting the coronavirus in check through the state’s isolation centres,…
Blog
When ‘a People’s War’ Turns Against Them: Reflections on Uganda’s ‘War of the Wananchi’ against COVID-19
With the incumbent President facing a critical election in early 2021, the truths over COVID-19 in Uganda became highly contested, as measures announced in the name of the people against COVID-19 began to double as interventions against the spread of…
Blog
The many faces of the COVID-19 mask in Eastern DRC
The introduction of the mask during the COVID-19 outbreak changed daily life in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and took many faces. From state repression in the city of Goma, to fear of the unknown in rural areas, the mask…
Background report
Community Approaches to Epidemic Management in South Sudan: Lessons from local healthcare systems in tackling COVID-19
Recognising the long experience and knowledge South Sudanese people have of infectious diseases and their responses, this research documents the various community infectious disease management strategies employed in the Yei, Juba, Wau, Malakal, Aweil West and Rubkona areas. Such responses…
Research paper
Lessons learned from implementation of a national hotline for Ebola virus disease emergency preparedness in South Sudan
The authors conducted a descriptive analysis on quantitative data from call logs reflecting 22 weeks of South Sudan’s Ebola alert hotline, along with thematic coding of qualitative data collected routinely. The hotline was set up during the preparedness phase of…
Research paper
The Politics of the Second Vaccine: Debates Surrounding Ebola Vaccine Trials in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo
Two experimental Ebola vaccines were deployed during the tenth Ebola epidemic (2018–20) in the DRC. International debate ensued about the value and ethics of testing a second vaccine in an epidemic context. This article examines how this debate unfolded among…
Background report
Crisis Responses, Opportunity and Public Authority during Covid‐19’s First Wave in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan
Discussions on African responses to Covid-19 have focused on the state and its international backers. Far less is known about a wider range of public authorities, including chiefs, humanitarians, criminal gangs, and armed groups. This paper investigates how the pandemic…
Background report
Will the Impact of the Pandemic on the Expected National Output Persist?
This Weekly Review, from June 3, 2021, contributes to the debate on how COVID-19 could affect economic growth in South Sudan. It addresses two related questions: What channels would transmit the COVID-19 scarring effects to the output? What can public…
Background report
COVID-19 and the Political Transition in South Sudan
This Policy Brief assesses the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic has hampered the political transition in South Sudan and how political actors have responded to the crisis in terms of their responsibilities implementing the Agreement on the Resolution of…
Research paper
Crisis responses, opportunity, and public authority during Covid-19’s first wave in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and South Sudan
Discussions on African responses to Covid-19 have focused on the state and its international backers. Far less is known about a wider range of public authorities, including chiefs, humanitarians, criminal gangs, and armed groups. This paper investigates how the pandemic…
Blog
What explains popular resistance to Ebola humanitarian responses in the DRC?
The humanitarian response to the DRC’s Ebola health emergency between 2018-20 was met with popular resistance by local populations, drawing attention to the perceived failures of humanitarian responses in the country over decades. To declare Ebola a health disaster was…
Research paper
Covid-19 and research in conflict-affected contexts: distanced methods and the digitalisation of suffering
This research note explores the pressing ethical challenges associated with increased online platforming of sensitive research on conflict-affected settings since the onset of Covid-19. We argue that moving research online and the ‘digitalisation of suffering’ risks reducing complexity of social…
Research paper
COVID-19 information dissemination in Uganda: Perspectives from sub-national health workers
In this study, an electronic survey was implemented to provide insights about the dissemination and utilisation of information and evidence related to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic by health workers engaged at sub-national levels of the Ugandan health system. The use…
Briefing
From Biolegitimacy to Antihumanitarianism: Understanding People’s Resistance to Ebola Responses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Despite the devastating impact of the Ebola pandemic which emerged in eastern DRC’s North Kivu in 2018, local populations seemed skeptical about its existence. This led to significant local resistance to the medical response, including armed attacks and violence, which…
Research paper
Determining the acceptability of a novel One Health vaccine for Rift Valley Fever prior to phase II/III clinical trials in Uganda
Several vaccine candidates for Rift Valley Fever (RVF) are in development for use in humans. A promising candidate, ChAdOx1 RVF vaccine, has been developed for use in both humans and animals, and has undergone field trials in livestock in Kenya.…
Research paper
Perceptions of ebola virus disease among the bambuti hunter group: a mixed-methods study
The second largest Ebola virus disease (EVD) epidemic occurred in the DRC from 2018–20. The Bambuti, a hunter population in the Ituri Forest of the DRC, may be vulnerable to the zoonotic spread of EVD due to their frequent handling…
Case study
Rift Valley Fever: Local Knowledge, Health-Seeking Behaviours and Attitudes Towards Vaccination in Southern Uganda fr
Case study addressing the challenge of vaccine uptake and regulating the unknown
Research paper
Impact of COVID-19 public health restrictions on older people in Uganda: “hunger is really one of those problems brought by this COVID”
In Uganda, older adults (aged 60 and above) form 2.7 percent of the population and are amongst the poorest members of society without a steady income or state pension system. Most older people in Uganda (and generally in sub-Saharan Africa)…
Research paper
COVID-19 pandemic, Uganda’s story
Uganda adopted its own model taking into consideration its culture, values, environment, socio-economic activities, beliefs, previous successful epidemic experience, and appears a hybrid policy to the Norwegian model. This model of response is perhaps based on Uganda’s long experience in…
Policy document
Uganda Human Rights Commission Statement on the state of human rights and the fight against COVID-19 in Uganda
Uganda Human Rights Commission Statement on the state of human rights and the fight against COVID- 19 in Uganda, April 2020. This sets out the Commission’s support, human rights concerns and recommendations for improving the government’s Covid-19 response.
