Uganda lauded for swift response to disease outbreaks

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Uganda stands out for its ability to detect and contain outbreaks swiftly, New Vision Online has heard. 

“Uganda has a very good reputation for being quick to respond to outbreaks,” 7-1-7 Alliance director Dr Mohammed Lamorde says.

He emphasises that for early detection to be effective, health workers must be trained to recognise disease symptoms using case definitions, the standard descriptions of how diseases present in patients.

Several other experts have underscored the urgent need for countries to strengthen their capacity to detect, report and respond to disease outbreaks promptly.

Lamorde said early detection remains one of the most powerful tools to prevent outbreaks from spreading and causing widespread illness and death.

“Outbreaks can spread very quickly and affect many people,” Lamode explained “The earlier you identify that there is an outbreak happening, the faster you can stop it from spreading.”

The 717 Alliance, a global initiative, supports countries to detect, notify and respond to outbreaks within specific timelines.

Uganda has been implementing the 7-1-7 approach for over four years, helping the country identify and address bottlenecks in outbreak response.

Speaking at the opening of the conference on Bioethics organised under the theme: Embracing Bioethics in Global Health at Hotel Africana on November 11, 2025, Makerere University College of Health Sciences (MakCHS) principal Prof. Bruce Kirenga said the theme of the conference is very important in addressing ethics in global health.

“Global health brings together people from diverse backgrounds working toward a common goal, and in such collaborations, challenges are bound to arise. That’s why experts must come together, discuss these issues, and find solutions.”

Prof. Nelson Sewankambo at MakCHS said in the fast-changing world, ethical research still means ethical research as it used to.

The research must be ethical. The challenge, though, in the fast-changing world is that it is difficult for ethics to keep up with the new and rapidly emerging issues. He said Just like professional standards, whether in medicine, teaching and in law, they are professional standards.

"The ethical standards are defined, they are debated, and they agree on something, and that is defined as a standard. However, with new things changing rapidly, it's difficult for policymakers, scientists and researchers to debate and understand those things quickly enough to establish a standard".

"Let us use a common example, artificial intelligence, which is now spoken of in all disciplines. How do you use, how do you develop AI in an ethical manner? In the developed countries, they have tried to move forward. But if AI is going to be used in our countries, where some things are different, we need to put that information in so that we are still ethical," Sewankambo said.

But for lack of resources, for lack of expertise and so forth, he said, 'we don't do that as quickly as artificial intelligence is moving forward'.

Prof Joseph Ochieng from the department of anatomy at Makerere University School of Biomedical Sciences, said they normally meet to discuss ethical issues associated with the environment and in the other biosciences.

"And as many disciplines evolve, including biotechnology and bioscience, we encounter challenging issues that need to be discussed and debated, so that we come up with the appropriate interventions and the methods of applying such new technologies," he said.

"We have had conditions like bad flu, Ebola and Marburg; many of these diseases cross boundaries, and when we are going to address them, we need global approaches so that we can address them together. ‘’We can no longer say it's a disease of only one country and it can be handled within one country," Ochieng added.