Uganda Mountain Community Health System—Perspectives and Capacities towards Emerging Infectious Disease Surveillance

Aggrey Siya, Richardson Mafigiri, Richard Migisha and Rebekah C. Kading
Additional contact information
Aggrey Siya: Department of Environmental Management, Makerere University, Kampala P.O. Box 7062, Uganda
Richardson Mafigiri: Global Health Department, Infectious Diseases Institute, Makerere University, Kampala P.O. Box 22418, Uganda
Richard Migisha: Department of Physiology, Mbarara University of Science and Technology, Mbarara P.O. Box 1410, Uganda
Rebekah C. Kading: Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Pathology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 16, 1-13

Abstract: In mountain communities like Sebei, Uganda, which are highly vulnerable to emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, community-based surveillance plays an important role in the monitoring of public health hazards. In this survey, we explored capacities of village health teams (VHTs) in Sebei communities of Mount Elgon in undertaking surveillance tasks for emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases in the context of a changing climate. We used participatory epidemiology techniques to elucidate VHTs’ perceptions on climate change and public health and assessed their capacities to conduct surveillance for emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. Overall, VHTs perceived climate change to be occurring with wider impacts on public health. However, they had inadequate capacities in collecting surveillance data. The VHTs lacked transport to navigate through their communities and had insufficient capacities in using mobile phones for sending alerts. They did not engage in reporting other hazards related to the environment, wildlife, and domestic livestock that would accelerate infectious disease outbreaks. Records were not maintained for disease surveillance activities and the abilities of VHTs to analyze data were also limited. However, VHTs had access to platforms that could enable them to disseminate public health information. The VHTs thus need to be retooled to conduct their work effectively and efficiently through equipping them with adequate logistics and knowledge on collecting, storing, analyzing, and relaying data, which will improve infectious disease response and mitigation efforts.

Keywords: alerts; village health teams; community-based surveillance; integrated disease surveillance and reporting; Elgon; climate change; one health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/16/8562/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/16/8562/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:16:p:8562-:d:613962

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().