The world needs President Museveni’s epidemic memoir
President Museveni’s book should preserve the thinking behind this record. Future leaders will face the same agonising questions: When to act, whose advice to trust, how to protect lives without destroying livelihoods, writes Allan Kasujja
Allan Kasujja. (File)
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OPINION
By Allan Kasujja
President Yoweri Museveni should write a book about fighting epidemics. In my judgement, President Museveni is peerless in providing leadership through them. Four decades of confronting diseases that threatened Uganda have produced knowledge that belongs to posterity. The next generation of leaders should inherit it.
When President Museveni took power in 1986, HIV was devastating Uganda. University lecturers, whom we thought were the smartest people in the country and chicken thieves were dying alike.
Grandparents were raising grandchildren because the children they had hoped would care for them in old age had died. Many of us became parents before we turned ten. We had younger siblings to raise.
It was bad. Every sector was affected. The men who had come out of the bush were governing through a catastrophe that reached into their own ranks. President Museveni’s account should tell us what happened there, too.
Who explained the danger? What could the doctors say with certainty? How did President Museveni persuade a frightened country to discuss sex, change behaviour and confront the shame surrounding the disease?
Decades later, I watched COVID-19 from England. Countries whose hospitals we admired were struggling to keep people alive. I interviewed a Spanish nurse who described patients dying alone, their families denied the chance to hold a hand or say goodbye. One story stayed with me. An 84-year-old woman decided a younger man should have the only ventilator available. She had lived her life, she said. She wanted to video-call her grandchildren and help them with their homework.
Research subsequently identified earlier epidemic experience, contact-tracing capacity and early preventive action among Uganda’s strengths. President Museveni gave that response direction.
Shamim, an old friend who leaned towards the opposition, told me she had become convinced that President Museveni loved Ugandans. The response changed her politics.
Then there is Ebola. A clinical manual developed for Uganda helped form the basis of World Health Organisation (WHO) guidance used during the West African epidemic. Ugandan clinicians contributed alongside international colleagues. Experience acquired here helped guide people treating patients elsewhere.
Uganda sent people, too. By August 2014, nearly 20 Ugandan health workers were supporting the response in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, working across treatment, laboratories, surveillance and community mobilisation.
Uganda is helping protect the world against Ebola. Yet the economic consequences of an outbreak can outlast its containment.
This year, tourism operators have reported cancellations, refund demands and financial distress. Behind each abandoned booking are guides, drivers, hotel workers and families who expected to earn from it.
WHO and Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) welcomed the end of Uganda’s outbreak on August 27. The CDC’s October 20, update recorded no reported active cases here. That achievement deserves attention. Instead, Uganda has been drawn into accounts of cases in Kenya and Nigeria because patients travelled through the country.
That distinction matters when a tour operator must explain a headline to a frightened client abroad.
Governments should protect travellers. Advice must also reflect the evidence and change with it. Africa CDC warned in June that blanket travel restrictions lacked supporting public-health evidence and could discourage transparent reporting.
Uganda raises the alarm so others can prepare. Silence would give the virus time to spread. The world owes Uganda a debt of gratitude. We should not be vilified for being honest.
President Museveni’s book should preserve the thinking behind this record. Future leaders will face the same agonising questions: When to act, whose advice to trust, how to protect lives without destroying livelihoods.
They will need more than a list of measures. They will need to understand the judgement behind them.
President Museveni should write while the conversations remain vivid and the people who shared those decisions can contribute their accounts. The doubts, failures and changes of mind will be as valuable as the successes.
Another epidemic will come. Somewhere. President Museveni’s experience will come in handy. What President Museveni leaves on paper could help that president save lives.
The writer is the Executive Director of Uganda Media Centre