KAMPALA: Uganda predicted a COVID-19 – like pandemic in the year 2010, a study by a researcher has revealed.

The details about this revelation are contained in a situation analysis paper authored by a Ugandan researcher and academic Dr. Sabastiano Rwengabo with support from Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) in May 2020. 

His research paper is titled: Covid-19 in Uganda: Toward a National Strategy on Complex Public Health Emergencies,’ by a Ugandan researcher, Dr. Sabastian Rwengabo. 

The author lays emphasis on the role of the State in developing and operationalizing a National Strategy on Complex Public Health Emergencies (CPHEs) in the country and draws from Uganda’s National Policy for Disaster Preparedness and Management authored in October 2010 by the Directorate of Relief, Disaster Preparedness, and Refugees- Office of the Prime Minister. 

It is from this Disaster Policy itself that while doing his desk research, Dr. Rwengabo discovered Uganda predicted had predicted Covid-19-like disease outbreaks, when it stated, in Section 2.1.8, that: “An influenza pandemic may occur when a new influenza virus appears against which the human population has no immunity.” 

The disaster policy document adds in the same section: “With the increase in global transport, as well as urbanization and overcrowded conditions in some areas, epidemics due to a new influenza virus are likely to take hold around the world, and become a pandemic faster than before.”

And the policy document went on to sound an early warning: “Pandemics can be either mild or severe in the illness and death they cause, and the severity of a pandemic can change throughout that pandemic… Current epidemiological models project that a pandemic could result in two to 7.4 million deaths globally. If an influenza pandemic were to occur today, we could expect the virus to spread rapidly due to the interconnected nature of the world and the high level of global travel.” 

Indeed, when the virus hit the globe in the fall of 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) designed a “Three C’s” model reflective of the Ugandan projection to describe settings where transmission of the COVID-19 virus spreads more easily. 

These were: i) Crowded places; ii) Close-contact settings, especially where people have conversations very near each other; and iii) Confined and enclosed spaces with poor ventilation. 

Ironically, by the time COVID-19 hit Uganda, the government had forgotten its forecaster document. Ugandans too were caught off-guard.

However, while other observers might conclude that this foresight may have influenced Uganda’s Covid-19 response, and while it is credited for controlling the virus relatively successfully, the Ugandan government either did not remember its prediction when the pandemic hit the nation in March 2020 or chose to keep quiet about it.

But Dr. Rwengabo insists that if the concentration of Covid-19 had been in rural Uganda or started in relatively poor and peripheral areas and communities, the pandemic would have been most devastating.

“What is perplexing is that since my paper exposed this prediction in 2020, there has not been a firm discussion about the pandemic and further so in the context of similar disasters predicted in the document. Until now, no conversation has evolved about his research- in which he proposes the development and operationalization of a national strategy on complex public health emergencies,” Dr. Rwengabo wrote to the ResearchFinds News desk yesterday.

What his Research Proposes:

Dr. Rwengabo’s paper examines the relationship between Covid-19 in Uganda, on one hand, and the development and operationalization of a National Strategy on Complex Public Health Emergencies (CPHEs) in the country. 

It lays emphasis on issues of State preparedness following the outbreak and global transmission of Covid-19; Responses to the subsequent transmission of the disease within Uganda; State-Society Relations driven or affected by intra-country transmissions and deaths; and the implications of these experiences, responses, and adaptations, for Uganda’s national strategy for CPHEs. 

Citing previous experiences of devastating pandemics, and the recent experiences of HIV/AIDS, Ebola, Marburg, and SARS-CoV-1 in Asia, Dr. Rwengabo argues that countries need well-coordinated, capacitated, multi-level teams and interventions in case of public health emergencies. He states that “unlike Covid-19, which might sneak into Uganda through border posts, other CPHEs may erupt from anywhere. 

“Remote places may be severely affected if there are no lowest-level teams to attend to emergencies, contain their impacts in specific locales, and seek higher-level assistance,” he observes. 

These measures, he opines, need timeliness and coordination and the strategy he proposes should specify actors and their roles at different levels, establish country-wide emergency-response capabilities at appropriate and accessible points, and enable the country to rapidly and quickly respond to disease outbreaks. 

Dr. Rwengabo calls for a multi-stakeholder effort to prioritize preparedness, response, and post-CPHE socioeconomic recovery to cushion society against the immediate and long-term impacts of CPHEs. 

 “Disease and other aspects of health security are becoming important elements of national security,” he counsels. 

Uganda’s latest COVID-19 response

According to the Ugandan Ministry of Health, ever since the pandemic hit the country in March 2020, Uganda has only registered 169,000 cases and recorded 3,628 deaths.

To tame the pandemic, the country imposed strict lock downs and emphasized social distancing and the wearing of masks in public places. 

The ministry’s current vaccination overview and captured by ourworldindata.org, Uganda has so far received 31.3 million doses since the pandemic hit the country in March 2020.

According to this data, out of an estimated 46 million Ugandans, only 12.5 million have been fully vaccinated, representing a vaccination performance of 27.4%. This means that a huge chunk of Ugandans is either partially vaccinated or not vaccinated at all.

The worldwide data shows that 67.7% of the world population has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. 

“12.58 billion Doses have been administered globally, and 4.74 million are now administered each day. Only 20.9% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose,” reveals the website ‘Our World in Data.’

Despite vaccination hesitancy, Uganda is among the few countries in the world that are credited with taming the deadly COVID-19 pandemic that has bred 604 million cases and 6.49 million deaths globally.

Who is Dr. Rwengabo?

Sabastiano RWENGABO (Ph.D.) is a Political Scientist and Independent International Consultant in Fragility and Resilience Assessments, Political Economy Analyses, Institutional Capacity Building, Leadership Training, and Governance.

He has, since 2005, accumulated vast consulting/research, and work experience with various international institutions. He holds a Ph.D. from the National University of Singapore (NUS). He is the author of Security Cooperation in the East African Community (Trenton N.J.: Africa World Press, 2018) and a journal paper related to this story can be accessed here: https://bit.ly/3DcYwwu

 

EDITOR’s NOTE: Look out for Dr. Rwengabo’s incisive interview about his model for disaster preparedness and management on Sunday, September 11, 2022.

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