2,400 emergency care providers to benefit from three-year training initiative
A 2024 national assessment found that only 36.6% of assessed health workers had basic emergency care training, while just 8.2% had advanced cardiac life-support certification and 9.5% had trauma life-support training.
Prof. Charles Olaro, Director General of Health Services at the Ministry of Health, says emergencies can occur anywhere, requiring lower-level health facilities to have workers equipped to provide immediate care. (Credit: Violah Niwaha)
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Only about one in three health workers assessed across Uganda have basic emergency care training, raising concerns about the country’s ability to save patients during the critical first minutes of illness or injury.
A 2024 national assessment found that only 36.6% of assessed health workers had basic emergency care training, while just 8.2% had advanced cardiac life-support certification and 9.5% had trauma life-support training.
The findings mean that a large proportion of frontline health workers may lack the skills needed to respond to common life-threatening emergencies before patients can be referred to higher-level facilities.
The gap is particularly concerning at lower-level health facilities, where many Ugandans first seek treatment and where health workers are often the first to respond to emergencies such as severe pneumonia, postpartum haemorrhage and injuries from road crashes.
The Ministry of Health, in partnership with the World Health Organisation (WHO), the African Federation of Emergency Medicine and the Emergency Care Foundation of Uganda, has launched a new initiative to strengthen basic emergency and acute-care skills among frontline health workers.
Over the next three years, the initiative will reach 200 health facilities in 85 districts and train approximately 2,400 healthcare providers in lifesaving emergency care skills.
The Acute Care Transformation through Basic Emergency Care Initiative, launched on September 10, 2026, seeks to expand foundational emergency and cardiac-care skills as part of efforts to improve Uganda’s emergency care system.
Dr John Baptist B Waniaye, the commissioner for emergency medical services at the Ministry of Health, said the country must ensure that emergency care training translates into practical skills that health workers can use when patients arrive in critical condition.
The initiative comes as health workers continue to encounter emergencies where the first few minutes can determine whether a patient survives or develops long-term complications.
Dr Kasonde Mwinga, the WHO Representative, said health workers routinely face life-threatening emergencies involving mothers, children and accident victims.
She cited severe pneumonia in children, postpartum haemorrhage among mothers and road traffic injuries as examples of emergencies in which timely intervention can determine the outcome.
“Most preventable deaths happen in the first hours after the illness or injury occurs. That is the window in which timely, high-quality care can make the difference between survival and death,” Mwinga said.
According to Mwinga, Uganda has already demonstrated the potential of basic emergency care training to improve outcomes.
She said Uganda’s National Basic Emergency Care Intervention, launched in 2015 alongside similar efforts in Nepal and Zambia, contributed to a reduction in hospital mortality and subsequently prompted the country to expand basic emergency care training to regional referral hospitals and selected general hospitals.
The new initiative will build on that experience, with WHO supporting Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda over the next three years to roll out a basic emergency care training package across 770 health facilities in the four countries.
In Uganda, officials said the focus will be on ensuring that emergency care capacity is not concentrated only at referral hospitals.
“When we manage emergencies well, we prevent 50% of the poor outcomes, including death and long-term disability,” Olaro said.
He said emergency care should not be left to higher-level facilities because the majority of Ugandans live and seek treatment at lower levels of the health system.
“This makes it imperative that we prioritise lower-level sections of our health infrastructure that cover the majority of the population, so the health workforce can manage this critical care,” he said.
Olaro said surviving an emergency does not always mean that the patient escapes its consequences, noting that some people are left with disabilities that affect their productivity and create additional financial burdens for families.
He also cautioned that training alone would not be enough unless health workers were able to apply the skills in real-life emergencies.
The Ministry of Health has urged district leaders to support the programme by selecting appropriate health workers for training and giving them sufficient time and space to acquire and practise the skills.
Mwinga called on the Ministry of Health to maintain strong stewardship of the programme and ensure that it is fully integrated into the national health system.
She also urged implementing partners to help the Government address challenges that could affect implementation and strengthen monitoring to establish whether the training is translating into better emergency care outcomes.
The initiative therefore seeks to address not only the shortage of trained emergency care workers but also the gap between training and the actual care patients receive when emergencies occur.