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KAMPALA - The Government has been urged to increase funding for the country's disaster preparedness to help mitigate the future impact of disasters and protect the country's development progress.

"We need to anticipate future risks," United Nations resident co-ordinator in Uganda Susan Ngongi Namondo said, adding that experience from previous disasters such as COVID-19 shows that some of the risks can have far-reaching implications for countries that are not prepared.

"Today, we know that we will have more of these occurrences so we just have to be better prepared for them," she said, referencing  COVID-19, which broke out in 2019 in China and later spread to all countries of the globe, killing 15 million people, more than 3,000 of whom were Ugandans.

She said Uganda also needs to put in place early warning systems and boost them to make sure that the country is better able to withstand shocks that "come at us."

"We have talked about the COVID-19 pandemic. We know that it is not the only pandemic we are likely to have. Are we better prepared now than we were four years ago when we started the current one (COVID-19)?"

She was speaking on Wednesday, March 20, 2024, during the national launch of the 2022-2023 Human Development Report.

Organised by the United Nations Development Programme, the event took place at Makerere University and was attended by several stakeholders including government officials, civil society, academia, and the general public.

Highlighting the theme of the event: Breaking the Gridlock: Reimagining Co-operation in a Polarised World, Namondo said progress seems to be slow by countries on how to collectively combat global problems including climate change.

However, that, she said, does not mean countries sit back and wait for consensus on how to deal with problems, but rather put in place systems to build resilience to emerging challenges and their ability to cope.

While disasters can happen anywhere, 85 per cent of those exposed to disasters reside in developing countries, according to the United Nations Development Programme.