Participants pose for a group photo at the "Strengthening leadership and management among local government health managers in Wakiso district, Uganda", Project Dissemination Workshop held on 23rd April 2025 in the MakSPH Auditorium.
Two new studies by researchers at Makerere University School of Public Health (MakSPH) reveal a troubling pattern at the centre of Uganda’s escalating antimicrobial resistance (AMR) crisis, a public health challenge where disease-causing bacteria and other germs stop responding to known medicines meant to kill them, making common infections harder or more expensive to treat.
The studies, conducted in Wakiso and neighbouring districts and recently published in leading scientific journals, examined key drivers of AMR from distinct yet connected perspectives. Together, they expose a health system under strain; shaped by poor-quality medicines circulating in communities, high and often inappropriate antibiotic use in healthcare facilities, and limited public awareness of safe medicine use, conditions now reinforcing one another and accelerating drug resistance.
At the centre, Assoc. Prof. David Musoke, one of the lead researchers on the two studies, and Ms. Bonny Natukunda (Senior Health Educator, Wakiso District) pose with community health workers, district health officials, and facilitators after an AMR workshop in Bukondo, Namayumba Sub-County, on September 22, 2025. Delivered under the NTU–Mak Partnership with Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, the week-long workshop trained more than 380 community health workers from Namayumba Sub-County.
According to the Ministry of Health, AMR in Uganda has reached concerning levels. By March 2025, resistant infections were estimated to kill 37,800 people annually, with over 7,000 deaths directly caused by AMR and more than 30,000 linked to infections no longer responding to available treatment. This surge is driven by unrestricted access to antibiotics, weak drug-regulatory enforcement, and widespread misuse of antimicrobials in humans and animals.
The Ministry acknowledges that many patients are treated without diagnostic testing, while low public awareness and weak stewardship across human and veterinary health services continue to fuel microbial resistance. As a result, bacteria that once responded to routine antibiotics now show resistance rates of up to 80 per cent in some cases, undermining treatment outcomes, food safety, and household incomes. It is this challenge that informed the two MakSPH studies.
Part of the study team, led by Assoc. Prof. David Musoke (extreme left), at the recent 10th National AMR Conference in Kampala on November 19, 2025, organised by the Ministry of Health, where they presented evidence from the two studies in Wakiso generated through the NTU–Mak Partnership.
Two Studies, One Warning
Evidence from both studies points to the need for coordinated action to strengthen medicine quality, improve prescribing practices, and build community awareness to preserve the effectiveness of essential treatments. In the first paper, published on October 6, 2025, in the Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice, researchers led by Associate Professor David Musoke examined how consumers encounter and respond to substandard and falsified medicines for both human and animal use.
Conducted in 2024, the study surveyed 432 community members in Wakiso District, where the Nottingham Trent University – Makerere University(NTU–Mak) Partnership, initiated by NTU’s Prof. Linda Gibson and MakSPH’s Assoc. Prof. Musoke, has implemented community-based health systems programmes for 15 years now. Using a structured household questionnaire, the team assessed knowledge, attitudes, and everyday practices related to medicine use.
NTU’s Prof. Linda Gibson and MakSPH’s Assoc. Prof. David Musoke at the British Academy Equitable Partnerships Workshop on November 20, 2025, reflecting on 15 years of the successful NTU–Mak partnership.
The second study, published on November 21 in the Dovepress Journal of Infection and Drug Resistance, was led by Dr. Bush Herbert Aguma, a pharmacist, health-systems researcher, and Lecturer in the Department of Pharmacy at Makerere University. Working with Assoc. Prof. Musoke and colleagues, the team applied the standardised Global Point Prevalence Survey (GPPS) to examine antibiotic prescribing across three hospitals and five lower-level health centres in Wakiso, Nakaseke, and Butambala. The survey assessed patient demographics, antimicrobial therapy details, and adherence to treatment guidelines to identify gaps requiring improvement.
The surveys were conducted at Entebbe Regional Referral Hospital, Gombe General Hospital, Nakaseke General Hospital, and five lower-level facilities in Wakiso, all part of the Commonwealth Partnerships for Antimicrobial Stewardship (CwPAMS) project at MakSPH implemented through the NTU–Mak Partnership. Alongside the surveys, the partnership has strengthened antimicrobial stewardship in these eight facilities through routine staff training, mentorship, community engagement, and capacity-building in infection prevention and control, microbiology, and detection of substandard and falsified medicines.
“The work was to empower the facility through its Medicines and Therapeutics Committee, which has a sub-committee on antimicrobial stewardship. That committee oversees the process, ensures future surveys are conducted, and can initiate targeted assessments when problems with specific prescriptions arise,” Dr. Herbert Bush Aguma, lead author of the second study, explained.
Dr. Herbert Bush Aguma, explaining the study’s results and impact from his office on December 8, 2025, noted that it has enabled the health facilities to independently track antimicrobial use, identify prescribing gaps, and strengthen stewardship practices.
He added that the programme in the selected facilities for the study went beyond just measuring antimicrobial use, to supporting the facilities develop stewardship plans, strengthening laboratory capacity, and training health workers across human, animal and environmental sectors under a One Health approach. As a result, he stated, facilities can now independently conduct point prevalence surveys, identify prescribing gaps such as inappropriate ceftriaxone use, and advocate for improved diagnostics, while hospitals, Village Health Teams (VHTs), veterinary and environmental officers increasingly address AMR drivers within their settings, leading to significant and lasting impact.
Over the last 15 years, the NTU–Mak Partnership, as part of this work, has trained more than 600 health workers across the human, animal, and environmental sectors in Wakiso, Nakaseke, and Butambala, and equipped over 1,300 community health workers (VHTs) in Wakiso with practical AMR knowledge. University-led programmes, international student competitions, and a 900-member online Community of Practice have further extended its reach. Together, these initiatives demonstrate how sustained community engagement can translate national AMR priorities into real-world impact, offering a model for locally anchored AMR interventions while also supporting the generation of new evidence to strengthen health systems, including the current two studies.
Right: MakSPH student Bridget Ahumuza celebrates a commendation as the 2025 Antibiotic Guardian Health Student of the Year, awarded through the NTU–Mak Partnership for her AMR stewardship advocacy.
What Communities Know, and Don’t Know, About Fake Medicines
In the first study, Assoc. Prof. Musoke and colleagues found that while 83 per cent of respondents had heard of substandard and falsified medicines, only 31 per cent could correctly define the terms, and just seven per cent could accurately identify a falsified product. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), a global health watchdog, substandard and falsified medicines fail to meet quality standards or deliberately mimic genuine products, often containing the wrong, too little, or no active ingredients. Such medicines put patients at risk of treatment failure, toxicity, and death and accelerate antimicrobial resistance by exposing bacteria to ineffective drug levels.
In Wakiso, the most populous district in Uganda with over 3.3 million people, although over 95 per cent of respondents recognised substandard and falsified medicines as dangerous, many reported having purchased drugs they suspected to be fake: 14 per cent for human and 24 per cent for animal use. To check authenticity, residents relied on advice from health workers or veterinary officers and on buying from trusted outlets. Yet reporting remained extremely low, as only one in four informed a health worker when they suspected a problem, and still, just four per cent had ever reported a case to the National Drug Authority (NDA), mandated to regulate drugs in Uganda.
These patterns reveal a community that recognises the threat of poor-quality medicines but lacks the agency to act. As the study notes, “community members from a range of backgrounds had limited knowledge and poor practices despite commendable attitudes on substandard and falsified medicines… Many respondents reported never having purchased and used substandard and falsified medicines knowingly or unknowingly, although a good number suspected that a medicine they previously purchased had been substandard or falsified.”
Over 50 health managers from 51 healthcare facilities in Wakiso District received certificates at the end of a two-day leadership development training on November 26, 2025, delivered through the NTU–Mak Partnership and Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH) in collaboration with the Wakiso District Local Government and the Ministry of Health. The workshop strengthened leadership capacity across the district health system.
In the second study on antibiotic prescribing, the researchers found high rates of antibiotic use across all eight public facilities. In the three hospitals, 87.2 per cent of inpatients were receiving at least one antibiotic, with ceftriaxone alone, the most commonly prescribed antibiotic in other studies, accounting for nearly one-third of all prescriptions. Most antibiotics were administered prophylactically, especially for obstetric and gynaecological surgeries, which made up 30.7 per cent of all hospital antibiotic use. In lower-level facilities, 60.7 per cent of outpatients received antibiotics, with amoxicillin accounting for 39.1 per cent of all prescriptions. Upper respiratory tract infections, many of them viral, were the leading reason for outpatient antibiotic use.
“Resistance to first-line antimicrobials increases the risk of morbidity and mortality. Unfortunately, the global rise in AMR has not been matched by the development of new antibiotics effective against resistant bacteria,” reads the paper in part. “As a result, healthcare costs are expected to rise, economic productivity will fall due to reduced workforce activity, and global life expectancy could drop by an estimated 1.8 years. This existential threat must be averted to avoid a post-antibiotic era in which even minor infections become fatal.”
In the study on antibiotic prescribing, the researchers found high rates of antibiotic use across all eight public health facilities, with ceftriaxone as the most commonly prescribed antibiotic.
Read together, the two studies provide a ground-level view of how AMR takes root long before a patient reaches a hospital or pharmacy. Poor-quality medicines remain widespread yet poorly understood, while health workers operate under heavy workloads, limited diagnostics, and outdated guidelines that make empirical treatment with antibiotics the default option.
These realities echo the warning delivered by Assoc. Prof. David Musoke, during his keynote address at the 10th National AMR Conference in Kampala on November 19, 2025. Speaking at the event organised by the National One Health Platform, institutionalised in 2016 under the Ministry of Health to coordinate AMR efforts, and held to mark World AMR Awareness Week 2025 under the theme Act Now: Protect Our Present, Secure Our Future, he cautioned that Uganda’s fight against AMR will falter unless communities are placed at the centre of national action.
“One in six bacterial infections globally, and one in five in Africa, are now resistant to available antibiotics,” Dr. Musoke said, citing the latest Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System (GLASS) Report 2025. “If Uganda is to make real progress, communities must be treated not as recipients of information but as genuine partners in the fight against AMR.”
Assoc. Prof. David Musoke delivers the keynote address at the 10th National AMR Conference in Kampala on November 19, 2025, warning that Uganda’s fight against AMR will stall unless communities are placed at the centre of national action.
What Must Change: Recommendations from the Researchers
To strengthen antimicrobial stewardship, the study on antibiotic prescribing recommends scaling up diagnostic capacity in public facilities so that treatment decisions are based on laboratory evidence rather than broad empirical prescribing, a medical term that means treatment initiated based on a clinician’s “educated guess” and clinical experience, in the absence of a definitive diagnosis or complete information about the specific cause of a disorder. Expanding functional microbiology services, the study says, would reduce reliance on broad-spectrum antibiotics, which accelerates resistance.
The authors also call for strict enforcement of national treatment guidelines, especially in surgical wards where antibiotics are routinely continued longer than clinically required. For them, reducing unnecessary prophylaxis, particularly in obstetric and gynaecological surgery, would go a long way in limiting misuse without compromising patient safety.
They further urge the Ministry of Health to eliminate non-recommended antibiotic combinations from routine use and ensure consistent stock management to prevent missed doses. This, in addition to strengthening Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH), and Infection-Prevention and Control (IPC) systems, combined with regular stewardship-focused training for prescribers, is highlighted as essential for improving prescribing standards. Finally, they recommend institutionalising routine point prevalence surveys in Uganda to track trends, guide facility-level action, and reinforce accountability for stewardship.
Makerere University students demonstrate proper hand hygiene while engaging residents in an AMR and hygiene awareness outreach in Kamwokya’s informal settlements on April 11, 2025.
On the other hand, to address the widespread circulation of substandard and falsified medicines, the study team call for a nationwide effort to improve public literacy on how to recognise, verify, and report suspicious medical products. The authors also argue that current reporting pathways are largely invisible, leaving most community members unsure of how or where to lodge complaints. Strengthening the National Drug Authority’s visibility and making its reporting mechanisms simple and accessible, in that case, is identified as a critical first step.
They also highlight the need to engage frontline actors, and this includes Village Health Teams, Community Health Extension Workers, veterinary officers, and local leaders, as primary change agents. These trusted community structures, the authors assert, are well-positioned to translate regulatory messages into actionable information than mass-media campaigns alone.
Given the extensive use of suspected counterfeit veterinary medicines, the authors call for strengthened One Health education and a fully integrated communication approach linking human, animal, and plant health risks. They recommend sustained messaging through radio and other local media, supported by community-driven monitoring systems able to empower consumers to act as partners in protecting the medicine supply chain.
Mr. Mathias Sserwanga (extreme right) of Namulonge HCIII in Wakiso district receiving his certificate from Assoc. Prof. David Musoke (2nd right), following a two-day leadership and management training on November 26, 2025, at Makerere University. The programme by MakSPH and partners has helped enhance the capacity of facility in-charges in Wakiso District to improve health service delivery to the people.
Uganda’s latest national HIV survey reveals lower viral suppression among adolescents and young adults living with HIV than among older adults, even as the country records substantial improvements in controlling the virus. The findings come from Uganda Population-Based HIV Impact Assessment (UPHIA 2025), a national household survey examining HIV prevalence and whether people living with the virus know their status, receive treatment, and achieve viral suppression.
Releasing the preliminary UPHIA 2025 findings at the Uganda Media Centre on 1 October 2026, Minister of Health Hon. Dr. Chris Baryomunsi called for earlier prevention and testing, particularly among adolescent girls and young women, alongside support for treatment adherence. “We must reach out to the young people, ensure that they have information, they test, take treatment, and adhere to the treatment guidance,” he urged.
Hon. Baryomunsi recalled how fear had discouraged testing during his university years: “I remember when we were at university, we went for testing at the university hospital. We sat there for three hours. Some of us left without even testing because it was scary.” Today, he explained, “even if you test HIV positive, you can be initiated on treatment, and you live normally like the rest of those who don’t have HIV.”
Minister of Health Hon. Dr. Chris Baryomunsi urges earlier HIV testing and stronger treatment adherence among young people at the UPHIA 2025 preliminary results release, Uganda Media Centre, 1 October 2026.
UPHIA 2025 was locally led under the Ministry of Health’s overall leadership, with Makerere University School of Public Health serving as the prime implementer, a role ICAP at Columbia University held in the previous two surveys. The Uganda Bureau of Statistics led sampling, while the Uganda Virus Research Institute and National Health Laboratory and Diagnostic Services led laboratory operations. Regional referral hospitals and local governments supported implementation, and the U.S. government provided US$10 million through PEPFAR, along with technical assistance from the U.S. CDC.
UPHIA collected data from July to September 2025 among people aged 15 and above, including those outside routine treatment services. Of 6,283 eligible households, 94.4% completed interviews. Researchers interviewed 13,801 people and tested 13,477 for HIV.
Testing followed Uganda’s national algorithm, with laboratory confirmation of positive samples, viral-load measurement, and checks for antiretroviral medicines to establish treatment use. Researchers weighted the estimates to account for the sampling design. Participants received counselling and results, and those who tested positive were referred for treatment.
Hon. Baryomunsi thanked participants and their families for welcoming survey staff and contributing their time, information and samples, without which the national evidence would not have been available.
UPHIA field staff sensitise community members about the survey ahead of data collection in July 2025.
National progress and the youth gap
The survey estimated HIV prevalence, which means the proportion of people living with HIV, at 5.9% among those aged 15 and above, corresponding to about 1.496 million people in this age group nationwide. Prevalence was 7.3% among women and 4.1% among men, ranging from 1.3% in Karamoja to 8% in the South Western region.
Among people aged 15 and above living with HIV, 86% had achieved viral suppression, meaning a low amount of HIV in the blood, measured in UPHIA as fewer than 1,000 copies per millilitre. Suppression stood at 69.3% among adolescents and young adults aged 15–24 living with HIV, compared with 89.9% among those aged 50 and above. These estimates cover people living with HIV regardless of whether they know their status or receive treatment.
A UPHIA field worker collects a blood sample from a survey participant in July 2025.
HIV prevalence among people aged 15–24 was 1.5%, including 2% among young women and 1% among young men. Among young women, prevalence was 1.3% at ages 15–19 and 2.8% at ages 20–24. These differences support attention to earlier prevention and testing, although they do not establish when infections occurred.
The highest prevalence estimates occurred among middle-aged adults: 15.7% among women aged 40–44 and 11.7% among men aged 45–49. Lower suppression among young people therefore requires attention alongside the higher HIV prevalence among middle-aged adults. Comparing the same age group across both surveys, viral suppression among people aged 15–64 increased from 74.9% in 2020–21 to 86.1% in 2025, while HIV prevalence remained at 5.9%.
UPHIA 2025 findings show HIV prevalence by age, sex and region among people aged 15 and above, with the highest estimates among middle-aged adults and in the South Western region.
Diagnosis and the path to 2030
The treatment results identify diagnosis as the main national gap. Among people aged 15 and above living with HIV, 85.3% knew their status. Of those aware, 99.1% were receiving treatment; among those receiving treatment, 96.5% had achieved suppression.
The 95-95-95 targets aimed for 95% of people living with HIV to know their status, 95% of those diagnosed to receive treatment, and 95% of those receiving treatment to achieve viral suppression by 2025. Among people aged 15 and above, Uganda exceeded the treatment and suppression targets, while diagnosis remained below target. UNAIDS’s Global AIDS Strategy 2026–2031 retains these targets towards ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.
According to WHO, viral suppression protects health and helps prevent HIV transmission. Uncontrolled HIV weakens the immune system, increasing the risk of serious illness. With continued treatment as prescribed, sexual transmission risk is negligible when HIV remains suppressed but detectable, and zero when undetectable. The Uganda AIDS Commission estimated over 34,000 new HIV infections in 2025, underscoring the importance of early diagnosis, timely treatment, and sustained suppression alongside other prevention measures.
Then Minister of Health Hon. Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng flagged off UPHIA 2025 field teams in Kampala on 29 May 2025 to generate evidence guiding Uganda’s HIV response towards ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.
The demographic stakes are substantial. People aged 15–24 constituted 21.2% of Uganda’s population in the 2024 census. The country’s Fourth National Development Plan, covering 2025–2030, prioritises a healthy, knowledgeable, skilled and productive population and reducing HIV through primary health care. Protecting young people’s health, therefore, supports their participation in education, work, and national development; UPHIA helps identify where services need greater attention.
Turning evidence into action
The study’s conclusions identify three priorities: sustain treatment outcomes, find people unaware of their status, and improve suppression among younger people. Permanent Secretary Dr. Diana Atwine connected the findings to the Ministry’s planning.
“We do believe that these results are a true reflection of what is happening in our country as far as the HIV status is concerned, and we do believe that it will give us a very clear direction and the roadmap that we are going to take in the next five years to target and to get our targets achieved.”
Ministry of Health Permanent Secretary Dr. Diana Atwine explains how UPHIA findings will guide the Ministry’s planning at the preliminary results release, Uganda Media Centre, 1 October 2026.
Acting on these priorities requires funding for services and research. Hon. Baryomunsi outlined plans to target resources where needs are greatest, strengthen district services and align partner support with government priorities. Responding to journalists’ questions, he noted the government’s intention to increase domestic funding for the HIV response, including research.
“The HIV/AIDS response, including research and surveys such as this one, has largely been funded by partners in the past. The government of Uganda is committed to allocating more resources from our domestic budget to support the response and research,” he noted.
For the first time in the UPHIA series, the survey assessed selected noncommunicable disease indicators among people aged 15 and above: 15.5% had elevated blood pressure, 24.8% were overweight or obese, and 0.9% had raised random blood glucose. These screening findings align with the Ministry’s integration agenda and Hon. Baryomunsi’s call to bring HIV and chronic care services together to address people’s wider health needs.
Speaking at the release of the preliminary results, U.S. Embassy Chargé d’Affaires Mikael (Mika) Cleverley described UPHIA 2025 as the first Population-Based HIV Impact Assessment worldwide fully led and implemented by the country itself.
U.S. Embassy Chargé d’Affaires Mikael (Mika) Cleverley highlights Ugandan leadership and U.S. support for UPHIA 2025 at the preliminary results release, Uganda Media Centre, 1 October 2026.
“The study was led by Ugandan scientists, Ugandan managers, Ugandan public servants, Ugandan field teams, from design to data collection to analysis. And this is what two decades of focused strategic U.S. foreign investments in the public health sector was meant to produce, is to reinforce Ugandan leadership and Ugandan-led efforts.”
At the survey launch on 29 May 2025, MakSPH Dean Prof. Rhoda Wanyenze highlighted the partnership’s contribution: “The partnership between Makerere University and CDC has not only helped build national capacity in surveillance and epidemiology, but has also strengthened our ability to lead high-quality, large-scale national surveys.”
MakSPH Dean and UPHIA 2025 Principal Investigator Prof. Rhoda Wanyenze highlights Uganda’s capacity to lead national surveys at the survey launch on 29 May 2025.
The Dean added: “After two decades of joint work, we are proud that UPHIA is now a fully Ugandan-led effort. This is critical to the sustainability of the skills and knowledge generation to inform our local response.”
UPHIA 2025 shows how far Uganda’s HIV response has advanced and where gaps remain. As the country works towards ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030, reaching young people with testing, treatment, and continued care will be essential to extending those gains.
MakSPH researchers, including UPHIA 2025 Activity Lead Prof. Frederick Makumbi and Project Director Dr. Sam Biraro, converse at the preliminary results release, Uganda Media Centre, 1 October 2026.
Health experts from across Africa have called for stronger use of routine health data in planning, supervision and service delivery, noting that although countries are generating large amounts of health information, much of it is still not being used.
The call came during a webinar hosted by the Makerere University School of Public Health (MakSPH) in partnership with The Global Fund under the theme “From National Dashboards to District Action: Strengthening Subnational Data Use for Planning, Supervision and Service Delivery.”
The webinar brought together health information specialists, policymakers and practitioners from Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia to share experiences and lessons on using subnational data for evidence based decision making.
Kenya’s journey from data collection to action
In her keynote address, Dr Helen Kiarie, Head of the Monitoring and Evaluation Division at Kenya’s Ministry of Health, urged health practitioners and policymakers to move beyond routine reporting and use data to improve health outcomes.
“The bottleneck is no longer collecting data. It is turning routine data into decisions and decisions into action,” Dr Kiarie said.
Drawing on Kenya’s experience, she pointed to the country’s shift from paper based reporting systems to digital platforms, noting that more than 95% of public health facilities have been digitised.
According to Dr Kiarie, Kenya has developed National Data Analytics Guidelines to support evidence based decision making across the health system. The guidelines set out a structured approach to data analysis, interpretation and dissemination so that the information generated can be used.
She said building a culture of data use requires leadership that asks for evidence, regular performance reviews, public dashboards, mentorship programmes, and the integration of data into planning and budgeting.
Community data improving maternal health
Dr Kiarie gave practical examples of how data can shape health outcomes.
In Kwale County, community health promoters used household level data to identify and follow up pregnant women, encouraging them to attend antenatal care services and deliver at health facilities.
As a result, skilled birth attendance increased from 50 per cent in 2022 to 85 per cent, while reported home deliveries fell from 808 to 248.
She also pointed to Kenya’s efforts to link digital health data with health financing systems, saying better documentation and data quality have strengthened accountability and increased reimbursements to health facilities.
She added that real time maternal and perinatal death surveillance systems are helping health authorities identify gaps in care, assign responsibility and take corrective action to prevent avoidable deaths.
“Data has moved beyond documenting losses to becoming an instrument for preventing the next avoidable death,” Dr Kiarie said.
Addressing data quality challenges
Despite major investments in digital health systems, Dr Kiarie acknowledged that data quality challenges remain.
She cited system downtimes, the parallel use of paper and digital records, limited access to some digital platforms, and resistance to change among some health workers as barriers to data quality and use.
Still, she said Kenya’s data quality has improved considerably through digitisation and continued investment in governance, analytics capacity and quality assurance.
Regional experiences and lessons
The webinar also included a panel discussion with experts from Uganda, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia, who shared experiences on strengthening data use at district and facility level.
The discussion pointed to the importance of strong leadership, timely information, digital infrastructure and feedback mechanisms that help health workers and managers make informed decisions with the data available.
Participants agreed that health information systems should do more than serve as reporting tools. They should also support decision making where services are delivered.
Moving from information to impact
Speaking during the webinar, Prof. Rhoda Wanyenze, Dean of Makerere University School of Public Health (MAKSPH), commended countries for progress in strengthening health information systems and encouraging data use.
She urged practitioners and researchers to go beyond documenting challenges and start capturing examples of how data informed decisions are improving programmes and health outcomes.
“It would be really good for us to dig deeper in terms of what decisions we have actually made and what we would not have known or done differently if we did not have the data,” she said.
In his closing remarks, Dr Wodimu Ayele of The Global Fund said the value of data lies in its ability to improve service delivery, inform decision making and strengthen accountability.
He called on countries to keep investing in data quality, analytics capacity and health information systems, while making sure evidence generated at all levels leads to measurable improvements in health outcomes.
Uganda has released the preliminary findings of the 2025 Uganda Population-Based HIV Impact Assessment (UPHIA 2025), a national household survey that provides a current picture of the country’s HIV response and selected non-communicable disease indicators.
At the Uganda Media Centre today, 1 October 2026, the Minister of Health, Hon. Dr Chris Baryomunsi, released the preliminary results and said the evidence would guide policy, resource allocation and service improvement, with particular attention to people and communities with the greatest gaps. He urged Ugandans to know their HIV status, use prevention services and, when diagnosed, start treatment promptly and adhere to it.
Hon. Dr. Chris Baryomunsi.
Among adults aged 15 years and above, HIV prevalence was 5.9 percent, including 7.3 percent among women and 4.1 percent among men. Among adults aged 15–64, prevalence was also 5.9 percent, unchanged from 2020/21. Across the country, prevalence ranged from 1.3 percent in Karamoja to 8.0 percent in the South Western region. Of adults living with HIV, 85.3 percent knew their status; 99.1 percent of those aware were on treatment; and 96.5 percent of those on treatment had achieved viral load suppression. HIV-status awareness remains the central gap in the 95-95-95 cascade.
The survey also measured selected non-communicable disease indicators for the first time. Elevated blood pressure affected 15.5 percent of adults, while 24.8 percent had overweight or obesity and 0.9 percent had raised blood glucose.
Stakeholders pose for a group photo at the UPHIA preliminary results release on 1st October 2026.
Conducted from July to September 2025, UPHIA 2025 was the first population-based HIV impact assessment to be fully country-led. The Ministry of Health provided overall leadership, while Makerere University School of Public Health served as the prime implementing organisation, working with UVRI, UBOS, regional referral hospitals and local governments. PEPFAR funded the survey through the U.S. CDC.
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