Operationalizing the One Health Approach in Uganda: Challenges and Opportunities

Uganda is considered as a 'hot spot' for emerging and re-emerging infectious disease epidemics. The country has experienced several epidemics including; Ebola, Marburg, plague, Rift Valley fever, yellow fever and Crimean Congo haemorrhagic fever. Epidemics overwhelm health systems, devastate economies and cause global health insecurity. These public health challenges arising from the interaction of humans-animals-environment link require a holistic approach referred to as One Health (OH). OH is the collaborative effort of multiple disciplines working locally, nationally, and globally, to attain optimal health for people, animals, and the environment. Given its situation, Uganda has embraced the OH approach in order to be able to predict, prepare and respond to these public health challenges effectively, though still in infancy stages. In this paper, we present major achievements and challenges of OH implementation, and make recommendations for systematic and sustainable OH implementation. Achievements include: formation of the National One Health (NOH) platform with a Memorandum of Understanding between sectors; a national priority list of zoonotic diseases, the NOH Strategic Plan and a One Health communication strategy to strengthen engagement across sectors and stakeholders. There have also been efforts to integrate OH in academia. The challenges are related to inadequate; coordination across sectors, government commitment, advocacy and awareness creation and research. For systematic and sustainable OH engagements, urgent efforts should be made through government support to address current and related future challenges.