PUBLIC | HEALTH | MUSEVENI  

KAMPALA - President Yoweri Museveni has signed the Public Health Amendment Bill 2022 into law.

The development means that the Government is now legally equipped to deal with emerging public health threats and emergencies unlike before.

Uganda’s unending battles against highly infectious diseases, such as Ebola, COVID-19 and Marburg are among the factors that prompted the Government to swiftly amend the law.

Written in 1935, the old law had become so obsolete to apply under the current situation.

For instance, when the health ministry was drafting the COVID-19 guidelines at the height of the pandemic in 2020, it didn’t have applicable provisions, forcing the Government to use provisions enacted during the Spanish Flu ( of 1918) to control COVID-19 through measures such as mask-wearing, isolation and quarantine.

Also, the fining of offenders of the standard operating procedures was not that practical because the maximum fine in the old law was sh2,000, which is not prohibitive enough.

"I would like to thank H.E the President for assenting to the Public Health Amendment Bill and it is now an Act of Parliament. The health committee ensured that the principal Act that had not been amended in 87 years now speaks to the current public health threats and emergencies," Koboko Municipality MP and chairperson of the committee on health Dr Charles Ayume tweeted.

He added that the country has been dealing with both infectious and non-infectious diseases as well as emerging diseases all of which required a robust response guided by a human rights approach to legislation.

Ayume said the amendment made it possible to include non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in the law, which will help the Government to address the country's rising NCD threat.

He added that while the old law put a lot of emphasis on infectious diseases it did not acknowledge new threats such as NCDs.