Health
Mak Donates 90 Lifebuoys to Uganda Police Marine Unit
The Makerere University School of Public Health (MakSPH) has donated 90 lifebuoys to the Uganda Police Force (UPF) Marine Unit, to aid the specialised unit in rescuing the drowning victims.
Assistant Inspector General of Police Edward Ochom, the UPF Director in charge of Operations hailed MakSPH for the strong partnership it has forged over time with UPF Marine Unit that bore fruits.
According to Ochom, UPF has for long been financially constrained making it difficult for the officers operate without adequate equipment. He hailed the partnership that has seen research output and now, a big boost of equipment.
He hailed the School for supporting the Marine Unit with 90 lifebuoys citing that they “will go a long way to support life when one drowns.” He was officiating at the handover ceremony of the items on Thursday October 8, 2020 at the Marine Base in Kigo, Wakiso District where he represented Inspector General of Police.
“I am privileged to be informed that this concern has not started now but the School used to offer life jackets to landing sites. Hence the love to preserve human life is well grounded in the School’s ideological mandate,” he said.
AIGP Ongom added that; “…we are really privileged that that we are being given 90 life rings. Our cardinal mandate in the Constitution is to protect life and property. And therefore, we are really concerned especially when people lose their lives on road, in water etc. We are really concerned and it is our duty to ensure that people don’t lose their lives like that.”
A recent study by the School showed that safe boating regulations are flouted, yet police was ill-equipped to ensure safety on the lake even as most drownings are preventable through policies and regulations that reduce risk exposure.
Mr. Abdullah Ali Halage, a lecturer at MakSPH said the intervention arose out of research conducted across the country around drowning, that stressed the limited resources and equipment by the law enforcers. He represented the Dean MakSPH-Prof. Rhoda Wanyenze at the donation of lifebuoys that were supported by the Bloomberg Philanthropies.
Globally, over 90% of the estimated 322,000 people who die in accidents related to drowning are in Low and Middle-Income Countries, making it the third leading cause of unintentional injury death; accounting for 7% of all injuries.
“We have conducted research and actually shared with you some of the reports that show that actually 95% of people using boats do not wear life jackets. Our reports also show that out of those who need to be rescued, very few get that support,” Mr. Halage said.
The results also show that many people drown without benefiting from any rescue attempts, because those who witness the drowning lack either rescue skills or rescue equipment.
According to Frederick Oporia, a Project Coordinator and Injury Epidemiologist at the Injury Epidemiology (Trauma, Injuries and Disability (TRIAD) unit of the School, majority people who drown lack survival swimming skills.” The TRIAD project is housed under the Department of Disease Control and Environmental Health.
The results also show drowning as a major cause of premature death in Uganda especially among young adults whose livelihoods depend on water activities. But Halage says most incidents of drowning are preventable through policies and regulations that reduce exposure to drowning risk and institutional interventions to ensure safety around water.
According to AIGP Ochom, the equipment used in such rescue missions is very expensive and that they can hardly be availed during the budgets. He observes that as police, they are mandated to protect lives irrespective of whether they have the means or not.
“We are really happy when we get institutions that also get their budgets from government and donate part of their meagre budgets that they get to another institution because I think they have seen during the research that we really need to be assisted. They are not doing it for themselves, they are doing it for the good of the nation. The Inspector General of Police is therefore highly indebted to Makerere University School of Public Health for the support they continue to give this specialised unit,” he noted.
The Marine Specialised Unit of Uganda Police Force is responsible for ensuring enforcement of law and order on water, Monitoring and Handling search and rescue.
The unit has 26 establishments/ detachments spread across the four major lakes in Uganda. A total of 17 marine establishments are on Lake Victoria, four (4) on Lake Kyoga, four (4) on Lake Albert, one (1) establishment on Lake George.
Engineer James Apora, the Uganda Police Marine Unit commandant also hailed the School for the big boost and the partnership citing that the equipment will ease their work.
“Our establishments are very few and very far apart. When you talk about emergency response, your response time becomes an issue when you are very far apart. The equipment you are using becomes an issue to take you there fast. The manpower also becomes an issue because you need very many numbers to expand,” says Eng. Apora.
“But the beauty is we have the will from police management to expand the unit. We have submitted our policing strategic plan for the next five years to establish additional 24 detaches that would make us to have at least 50 detaches spread all over the lakes. And we are also now venturing into the in-land lakes. Of recent lake Bunyonyi has become an issue and that is one of the areas we intend to open our detaches,” he hastened to add.
According to Eng. Apora, lifebuoys save about 4 persons at ago. “You can hang about four persons on it who can then be pulled to a safer area. I feel this is the greatest thing a stakeholder can do. The rest we can always talk but when you do it in practice, I think it speaks more.”
Dr. Olive Kobusingye, a Research Fellow and the Principal Investigator says despite the lack of incapacity to ensure safety on the lake, Police Officers have done tremendously well in ensuring they save lives and restore hope to Ugandans.
“We took about a year talking to a lot of people like yourselves [marine officers], we went to all Marine Police detaches and many other places and talked to people that have retrieved bodies, that have saved people from drowning, that have worked with families of those that have drowned and they all tell these stories but their stories go unacknowledged and a lot of work goes unacknowledged and I really would like to say thank you so very much indeed,” Dr. Kobusingye said at the handover ceremony.
About the Study
The report, issued on Thursday, presents findings of a two-phased study that was conducted in 60 districts of Uganda for a period of 2.5 years from a period of January 2016 to June 2018.
In the first phase of the study, records concerning 1,435 drowning cases were found in the 60 districts. Other than stating that the individual had drowned, there was very little information that could potentially guide prevention efforts.
The second phase was limited to only 14 of the 60 districts. In these 14 districts, a total of 2,066 drowning cases were identified by community health workers and confirmed through individual interviews with witnesses, family members, friends and survivors of drowning.
The report on understanding and preventing drowning in Uganda released on Thursday revealed high rates of drowning in both lakeside and non-lakeside districts.
Statistics analysed from the National Population and Housing Census Main Report of 2014, show that a total of 872 drowning deaths and 533 drowning survivors were recorded from the lakeside districts of Mayuge, Rakai, Serere, Hoima, Nakasongola, Masaka, Soroti and Rubirizi.
UBOS data also shows that a total of 402 drowning deaths and 146 drowning survivors were recorded in the reporting period for non-lakeside districts of Mbarara, Arua, Kitgum, Kabale and Mubende. In Kampala alone, the reporting period had a total of 58 drowning deaths recorded and 55 drowning survivors.
During the two-and-a-half-year study period, 1,435 drowning cases were recorded in the district police offices, marine police detachments, fire/rescue brigade detachments, and the largest mortuary in the 60 study districts.
“This is not the number of drowning cases that occurred during that time, but rather the number of drowning cases that were recorded. We learned from this study that many more cases of drowning happen that are never reported or recorded in administrative sources,” says Dr. Kobusingye.
According to the report, majority of the recorded cases were deaths (about 90%).
AIGP Ongom said the research will inform the Uganda Police Force’s top management on the causes of death on water, mitigating factors and strategies that can be put in place to minimise them.
He urged the marine unit to vigorously engage in strategies that can prevent people from drowning.
“For some of those cases that I have known, and also having a background of marine of course, we used to retrieve bodies and conduct investigations. There situations where you would really find it difficult even for the people to save themselves. I would sincerely request that we don’t end at research. We need to do a lot of preventive policing on our water bodies,” AIGP Ongom said.
Article by Makerere University School of Public Health
Health
Makerere University Public Health students recount hands-on experience in Ebola case finding in Uganda
On Tuesday January 14, 2025, under the radiant rays of the Ugandan sun, Laura Silovsky crossed the stage at Makerere University’s 75th Graduation Ceremony to receive her master’s degree in Public Health Disaster Management (MDM). Hers is a story of passion, dedication, and curiosity to rewrite the narrative of global education. Among 1,813 master’s graduates, Laura’s story stood out, as a blend of refugee roots, firefighting bravery, and a drive to decolonize learning.
Laura’s journey began long before her arrival in Kampala. Born in the UK to a father who fled from Czechoslovakia’s dictatorship in the 1970s, she grew up understanding displacement intimately. “My father was a refugee. Why would I fear refugees?” she once asked during her research fieldwork in Uganda’s West Nile, where her empathy bridged divides.
“People in Uganda may not expect that a muzungu could be the child of a refugee, but my family experienced displacement from (what was then) Czechoslovakia as well as the effects of the protracted conflict in Northern Ireland. Fortunate to have been born in the UK, I was raised to appreciate that disasters can affect anyone, anywhere, anytime.
After studying Sustainable Development at the University of Edinburgh, I worked on a behavior change project tackling non-communicable diseases in Scotland,” Laura says.
Her journey twisted through battling Australia’s bushfires and volunteering in a COVID pandemic, but it was Uganda’s welcoming refugee policies and Makerere University’s academic excellence that pulled her in next.
“In 2020, I relocated to Australia, just after the worst bushfires since records began and before the COVID-19 pandemic. The following two years, I qualified as a firefighter and supported bushfire recovery by volunteering with a community-based organization. After gaining some insight into these different disasters, I made the decision to return to higher education, and so I applied for the MDM programme at Makerere in 2022,” says Laura.
Armed with experience in emergency response, Laura was drawn to the field’s multidisciplinary nature and was convinced she needed to expand her expertise beyond immediate recovery efforts. She aimed to explore the full disaster management cycle and the intricate connection between health and environment.
“I needed to combine gaining academic knowledge with developing practical skills, so the field placement offered within the master’s degree in Public Health Disaster Management programme was a major motivator for me,” she shared.
The love for Uganda
Studying at the University of Edinburgh, Laura took a class in Kiswahili, that included a field-based short course on the Tanzanian shores of Lake Victoria. This experience sparked a desire to spend more time in the region, but she knew she needed to expand her skill set in order to genuinely add value to an organisation, if she was on the continent.
“I hoped studying at an East African university would teach me invaluable soft skills needed to work more effectively as an international team member. Makerere University School of Public Health (MakSPH) has a strong reputation, and I wanted to study somewhere that was locally grounded but globally recognized. Uganda’s progressive refugee policies were an added incentive to learn from experts here,” Laura says.
Laura’s intentional choice to decolonize her education
“I came to Uganda to learn from the experts here,” Laura declared, rejecting Eurocentric frameworks. “A big factor for me wanting to study at Makerere University was to decolonize my education, to recognize that the knowledge about responding to public health disasters and supporting refugees is here in Uganda,” she says.
She adds, “When I first arrived, I was quite vocal with my classmates about wanting to challenge that bias and truly acknowledge the wealth of knowledge within institutions like Makerere. The expertise here is invaluable, and I was intentional about decolonizing my education.”
At MakSPH, Laura immersed herself in courses like epidemiology, struggled briefly with statistics, but thrived on critical discussion groups and consultation with lecturers.
Collaborating with classmates from Uganda and across East Africa, she learned Luganda phrases and Somali proverbs, and built a “family” united by late-night study sessions and shared ambitions.
Beyond expectations
For Laura, studying at MakSPH was the best decision she could have made. She is still struck by the faculties’ wealth of academic and professional experience in public health and disaster management.
“I anticipated the programme would focus on applying the knowledge we gain to real-world scenarios. Of course, there were cultural differences that took me time to adjust to. I am grateful to faculty members such as Prof. Christopher Garimoi Orach, for his dedication and support, Prof. Elizeus Rutembemberwa for leading by example and valuing students’ time, and Dr. Justine Bukenya and Dr. Simon Kibira for offering their extensive support as my dissertation supervisors.”
The Fieldwork Attachment that Transformed Laura’s Research Experience
At Rhino Camp refugee settlement in West Nile, Laura’s work took on new meaning. Partnering with the Uganda Red Cross Society, she helped digitize data tools and walked long distances through Tika Zone, inspecting latrines and speaking with South Sudanese girls about their challenges in managing their menstrual health through their project that focused on schools.
“That experience in West Nile influenced my own research ideas, and it was a privilege to later return to Rhino Camp for data collection. I will always remember the long days walking with my research assistants through villages and being graciously welcomed by so many respondents,” she recalls, noting that the experiences crystallized her resolve to advocate for refugee dignity globally.
Life in Kampala
Life in Kampala, with its vibrant energy and unique challenges, was truly a ‘full sensory experience’ for Laura. “My parents live in a small village, so Edinburgh felt like a big city when I moved there. And Edinburgh is much smaller and quieter than Kampala! But on weekends, I loved going downtown to shop at Owino Market or heading to Kyadondo Rugby Club for some pork.”
These spaces were perfect for Laura, offering new cultural experiences, including matooke, a starchy dish not found in the UK, which is mainly eaten in Uganda as a local delicacy and staple meal. Despite the differences in culture, sharing meals with classmates provided Laura with a comforting sense of connection.
Back to academics, navigating the university administrative processes wasn’t seamless initially for Laura, though. She says administrative hurdles such as paper-based systems, could change for the university to comfortably enjoy its strong reputation.
She recalls, right at the beginning, when she couldn’t find sufficient information online to support her to complete her application to join Makerere University. However, she later received support from the University’s International Office that deals with the welfare of international students.
Other university officials, from finance, librarians, program administrators, to academic registrars, played a key role in supporting her in her research and postgraduate training. “The system relies on dedicated individuals,” she noted, calling for digital reforms while praising MakSPH’s “atmosphere of innovation.”
“From my experience, such as when obtaining my transcript, the system relies heavily on individual staff members working around these administrative challenges. I’m grateful for those who helped me navigate this, and I’m interested to see how the university continues its digital transition, as it could greatly streamline processes in the future,” says Laura.
A Bittersweet Graduation Day
On graduation day, Laura’s pride mingled with melancholy. Watching families cheer on graduates, she reflected on classmates sidelined by finances or family crises.
Having gone through the course and interacted with Ugandan students, Laura hints on the common financial and personal challenges preventing many from graduating: family illness, new children, sponsorship falling through.
“I know so many of my classmates had worked so hard and were almost over the finish line but, due to financial challenges or other commitments at home, it wasn’t possible for them to graduate this year,” she says.
“For me, I was able to make the choice to pursue this program before having children, so I had fewer responsibilities at home, and I had also been saving for many years to get the money to pay tuition. Because I knew I had the money for tuition before I started, I could focus on studying. As you know, the reality for many people is that that’s not always possible.
“Small supports can transform student experiences,” Laura emphasized, advocating for systemic empathy. She sees great potential for more pastoral support at the university, citing peers from UCU and Kyambogo who benefited from accommodations like private breastfeeding spaces and flexible deadlines in special circumstances. Such initiatives, alongside financial aid, could significantly improve student welfare.
Still, the ceremony’s electric energy—watched via livestream by her parents in Europe—symbolized hope. “Uganda taught me that collaboration transcends borders,” she reflected.
“You could feel this sense of how hard everyone had worked to reach up to that point and that this was really an opportunity for them to celebrate, particularly by having family and friends around to be able to see. I love the PhD awards, when you see the PhD students coming out and their families rushing up to greet them. To me, that’s the best part of the ceremony, because a PhD requires so much work and commitment, and I think it’s really emotional to see everyone share this moment with their support networks,” she says.
Adding that; “…I was so grateful that the ceremony was streamed online. My family were watching live at home in Europe and it was so special that they could see me on camera and participate in the ceremony that way as well.”
Laura noted striking similarities between Makerere and Edinburgh’s ceremonies, especially the moment when students were asked to turn and thank their families, an emotional and powerful tradition.
Looking Ahead
Now in Tanzania, Laura eyes roles with international NGOs, armed with Ugandan-taught pragmatism and a zeal to challenge Europe’s refugee policies. “MakSPH gifted me more than a degree—it reshaped my worldview,” she says.
“As a muzungu with a Ugandan postgraduate education, I feel privileged to have benefitted from different educational perspectives, and I hope that the skills and knowledge I acquired during my time at Makerere will help me to secure a role with an international NGO. After witnessing the incredible support that Uganda provides to refugees, I also hope to advocate for more dignified policies concerning refugees in Europe,” she shares.
“There’s a spirit of innovation and dedication at Makerere, particularly when passionate lecturers like Prof. Orach, Dr. Roy Mayega, or Dr. Victoria Nankabirwa engaged students through discussion and sharing lived experiences. You could really see a different level of engagement within the students as well. Overall, I’ve had such a fantastic experience at Makerere University.”
“I wouldn’t change a thing,” she smiles.“Except maybe convince more Europeans to study here. Africa’s wisdom is the future.”
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