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
Prof. David Guwatudde, Principal Investigator (centre), and Dr. Justine Bukenya with researchers and stakeholders at the ARISE-NUTRINT dissemination meeting in Iganga, 1 October 2026.
Adolescence is a consequential period for health, when diets, behaviours and other risks can form and persist into adulthood. In Mayuge District, new evidence from Makerere University School of Public Health is showing how some of these early vulnerabilities could contribute to the later risk of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), and what can change when interventions begin early.
The evidence comes from the ARISE-NUTRINT project, a three-year EU-funded study led by Prof. David Guwatudde and Dr. Justine Bukenya. The project examines health and behavioural risks among adolescents and young adults, with a particular focus on nutrition-related NCD risks, and tests interventions designed to improve nutrition fluency and diet quality.
The work comes against a substantial NCD burden in a country where 73.2% of the population is below 30. WHO estimates that NCDs accounted for 42.2% of deaths in Uganda in 2023, while the country’s latest national NCD risk-factor survey found significant risk factors persisting in the population, with little overall change from the previous survey in 2014. Together, the evidence strengthens the case for prevention much earlier in life.
“There is strong evidence from literature demonstrating that most behavioral NCD risk factors, including nutrition-related, are established during childhood, persisting into adulthood. This may lead to development of actual NCDs if such risks are not reversed early,” Prof. Guwatudde said.
The study, he explained, linked assessment of young people’s health risks with developing responses suited to their circumstances. Since enrolling 1,206 participants aged 10–24 in Mayuge District in March 2024, the team has conducted three annual rounds of data collection, with young people and local stakeholders also helping evaluate interventions to reduce the risks identified.
A problem that starts early
The findings, shared with community and district stakeholders in Iganga on October 1, 2026, show that some vulnerabilities were already evident at baseline. Nearly one in three participants had anaemia, 49% had low nutrition literacy, while about one in ten reported symptoms of anxiety and a similar proportion reported depressive symptoms.
Anaemia, a condition in which the blood does not have enough healthy red blood cells or haemoglobin to carry adequate oxygen around the body, was highest among the youngest participants. Overall, 375, or 31%, had anaemia, rising to 35.7 per cent among 10–14-year-olds, compared with 18.9% among those aged 15–19 and 10.6 per cent among young adults aged 20–24.
Nutrition presented another challenge. At baseline, 49% of participants had low nutrition literacy and 13% had poor overall diet quality. Low nutrition literacy was associated with more than four times the odds of poor diet quality.
Gaps also emerged in sexual and reproductive health knowledge and behaviour. About 14 per cent of participants did not know that HIV cannot be transmitted by sharing food with a person living with HIV, 10% believed a condom could be used more than once, and 13 per cent did not know pregnancy could occur during first sexual intercourse. Among 168 participants who reported having had sex, more than half reported using no method to prevent pregnancy during their first or most recent sexual intercourse.
Mental health findings added another dimension. Anxiety symptoms were reported by 10 per cent of participants, depressive symptoms by 9.5% and loneliness by 6.3 per cent. Among 534 participants aged 13–24 assessed for suicidal ideation, 1.9% reported suicidal thoughts.
Together, the baseline findings show that vulnerabilities extended beyond any single health issue. For nutrition, the study went further to examine what shaped everyday food choices and whether those influences could be changed.
Nutrition literacy goes beyond knowing which foods are healthy. It includes understanding nutrition information and applying it to everyday choices. The study found those choices were also shaped by parents, peers, food vendors, culture, prices, seasons, and what was available locally. Improving diets, therefore, required reaching beyond individual knowledge to the households and communities where food choices are made.
What early action changed
The baseline evidence informed the Adolescent Nutrition Fluency Intervention. Working with adolescents and young adults, caregivers, Community Health Workers (CHWs), district teams and other stakeholders, the project adapted nutrition messages to local foods, language and household realities. Ten trained CHWs delivered nine monthly household sessions covering balanced diets, physical activity, vitamins and minerals, meal planning and anaemia prevention.
The household approach reached young people in and out of school. The nutrition literacy, diet-quality and intervention analyses form part of the PhD research of Mr. Thomas Buyinza, supported through ARISE-NUTRINT. At endline, participants who received the sessions recorded higher nutrition literacy and overall diet-quality scores.
“The improvement in nutrition literacy and diet quality suggests that practical education, grounded in local foods and household realities, can support healthier choices among adolescents and young adults. In addition, involving parents and caregivers is important because they influence what families buy, prepare, and eat,” Dr. Bukenya said.
She stressed that nutrition education needed to be complemented by better access to affordable, nutritious foods. Dr. Bukenya also called for continued follow-up, including the use of nutrition and dietary data from DHIS2, to assess whether improvements were maintained and guide district planning.
Changes in other outcomes were mixed. Participants reporting no physical activity fell from 22.6% to 7.4%, while those active on four to seven days a week increased from 46% to 54.8%. But activity duration did not improve: those reporting more than 60 minutes a day declined from 28.2% to 21.1%. Underweight fell modestly from 6.2% to 5%, while overweight and obesity did not change significantly.
Anaemia recorded the largest change, falling from 31.1% before the intervention to 9.9% afterwards. During the intervention period, participants received weekly iron and folic acid supplementation and deworming alongside nutrition education on iron-rich foods, dietary diversity and practices that improve iron absorption.
Mayuge District’s Assistant District Health Officer, Ms. Elizabeth Kawaala, said the findings reflected problems recognised locally and highlighted the need for a response involving families and other stakeholders.
“There is a serious challenge that needs to be tackled with many stakeholders, with parents at the centre because these are children. We also learnt that many parents, I think, lack the skills to communicate with their adolescents,” she said.
She said the findings had been shared with colleagues and described integrating health education and sensitisation into services. She also called for departments to use the evidence when planning activities in their workplans.
Beyond Mayuge
Seen alongside Uganda’s 2023 STEPS survey, the Mayuge findings add an earlier-life dimension to the national evidence. Makerere University School of Public Health contributed to both studies, with Prof. Guwatudde contributing to the national STEPS survey and now leading ARISE-NUTRINT. While STEPS found significant NCD risk factors persisting among adults, ARISE-NUTRINT shows that some behaviours and vulnerabilities relevant to later NCD risk are already evident during adolescence and young adulthood. The Mayuge research goes further by testing what can change when interventions begin during this period.
The findings leave Mayuge with more than a measure of the problem. They show where vulnerabilities are emerging, what changed when interventions were introduced and where challenges remain. For ARISE-NUTRINT, the evidence now turns attention to which approaches can be sustained and how lessons from Mayuge can inform efforts to support healthier transitions from adolescence into adulthood.
Through a European Union (EU) funded initiative, Makerere University and Mulago Hospital are hosting a German oncology reconstruction specialist Professor Dr. Thiha AUNG. AUNG is a surgeon, trainer at the Deggendorf Institute of Technology (THD), and researcher on cancer from the Deggendorf Institute of Technology (DIT), Germany.
With his international expertise in oncology and medical management roles at his home institution, his visit is a valuable addition to Uganda’s capacity building efforts in medical advancement.
Prof. Aung who arrived in Uganda in late September 2026 and has since then conducted free identified patient specialised surgeries and training for locals. These are expected to span two weeks. For the period, his service intersects medical expertise and humanitarian efforts.
This is not Prof. Aung’s first time in the country; his first major visit was in 2023, when he performed life-changing free surgeries on early patients. He then made medical history in June 2024 when he arrived to perform Africa’s first-ever lymph node transplant at Mulago Hospital.
It was against this background that the Makerere Public Relations Office engaged him in an exclusive interview to share his philosophy on medical service, his experiences in oncology reconstruction, and his unwavering belief that passion and dedication rather than just resources are the true drivers of sustainable medical progress.
Transforming Lives Through Oncology Reconstruction
At the heart of his mission through the ERASMUS – Oncology/Lymphedema project, is the treatment of lymphedema, a condition often referred to as elephantiasis.
In Europe, such surgeries can cost between 80,000 and 100,000 euros, making them inaccessible to many.
Thankfully, Professor and his team, including some of his post graduate students like Anna Friedrich (B.Sc) and Sophia Waser (B.Sc., PA) from the Institute of Medical Science and Engineering, have once again brought this specialised care to Uganda pro bono.
He highlights the story of a teacher who, after receiving surgery, regained her quality of life and returned to the classroom. For him, the impact is exponential. “You change one life, but this person changes a lot in the community.”
This shift from individual surgery to the long-term wellbeing of the community, reinforces the local impact of these services.
Professor AUNG’s Personal Conviction
The professor confessed that inherently, he commands himself that beyond knowledge, true progress is driven by passion and will rather than resources.
He does not agree with those that think money and resources are the sole prerequisite for change in the medical world, stating, “you cannot change with money only.” Rather, he upholds the importance of personal decision and commitment.
When discussing the challenges of working in resource-limited settings, he maintains a simple, direct explanation “it’s always beyond the money.”
Ultimately, the Professor believes that if he can provide the spark, his students and patients can carry through with the same flame for significant change.
Motivation to Serve in Uganda
When asked about his inspiration for entering the field and now volunteering to work in Uganda, he explained that his primary goal was always to serve others. “That’s why I finished my medical school to help as many people as possible with my skills.”
He views his medical expertise not as a tool for the privileged, but as a universal resource., “People are all the same, their anatomy is the same. So, I can help all these people pretty well,” Prof AUNG remarked.
His approach is motivated by a pay it forward dogma where treating a single patient creates a broader societal benefit. He illustrates this through his work with patients who, after surgery, are able to return to their professions like the teacher earlier mentioned.
Tips for Medical Professionals working in Uganda
As a foundation for professional growth, the Professor advised medical professionals working in Uganda to prioritise genuine interest in their work because he believes it is “the most important…” for “if you are interested, you will go far in the profession.”
He further reinforced the human capacity point, noting, “no matter what kind of equipment you have… it all depends on the people operating them and the patient.”
Professor AUNG concluded by encouraging doctors to overcome resource fears through action, stating, “If you want to create impact or change, you do.”
Dr. AUNG is part of the Lymphoedema Warriors Association (LWAU) in Uganda. He describes it as a grassroots organisation and commends them for “leveling the grond”. He reiterated his commitment to work with the organisation in reviewing patient reports to determine the best course of treatment.
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