Farmers grazing their cattle in Labongo Amida Subcounty in Kitgum District were a mass vaccination against blackquarter disease was conducted recently.
Kitgum, Uganda | Kitgum District multi-million veterinary laboratory is lying idle due to a lack of a qualified specialist to operate it.
The laboratory was constructed by OXFAM and handed to the district local government in 2008 to enhance animal health and improve livestock production. It is equipped with a cold chain for vaccine storage, incubators, a centrifuge, a microscope among others.
However, 12 years later after its commissioning, the laboratory hasn’t fully operational.
Kitgum District Veterinary Officer Dr Alfred Kinyera says they have only been using the cold chain for vaccine storage while the rest of the equipment hasn’t been used due to the lack of a specialist to operate them.
He says the district hasn’t been able to employ a specialist since its inception, leaving simple and complicated animal sample tests to be conducted outside the district.
Dr Kinyera says animal samples requiring tests that would have been easily conducted at the Laboratory are now referred to National Animal Disease Diagnostics and Epidemiology Centre (NADDEC) Laboratories Entebbe, Gulu Regional Veterinary laboratory or Makerere University.
He says the absence of a laboratory specialist have negatively impacted on the diagnosis of animal diseases adding treatment are sometimes based on clinical signs and not laboratory test results.
“When you treat based on laboratory confirmation, you are sure. But currently, the treatment is based on guesswork. This is also sometimes why the response to disease control is low,” Dr Kinyera told Uganda Radio Network in an interview.
The veterinary department is also faced with limited personnel according to Dr Kinyera. There are only five assistant veterinary officers in the district who currently provide veterinary extension services to all the 22 sub-counties.
Kitgum District Production officer Alfred Omony acknowledges that the district hadn’t recruited a laboratory technician for long to ensure full operation of the veterinary laboratory.
Omony attributes the challenges to the low wage bill by the government which is unable to support the recruitment and remuneration of a laboratory specialist.
According to Omony, when the government increased the wage bill in the last financial year, they were instead tasked to prioritize the recruitment of a principal veterinary officer, an entomologist and a senior agricultural engineer.
“If we had the money to support their payment, we would have recruited a Laboratory specialist already. Money is our problem,”
He says the district is also lacking a laboratory specialist to operate a multi-million mini crop disease and pest diagnostic laboratory which is currently also lying idle.
The mini-laboratory was established in 2015 by the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries under the Peace Recovery and Development Program-PRDP.
Kitgum District is currently facing an outbreak of a suspected African swine fever –ASF that has so far killed more than 600 pigs in Labongo Akwang Sub-county.
Omony says diagnosis for such a strange disease would have been easily done through laboratory tests conducted from the Laboratory in the district if they had a laboratory specialist.
Unless the government releases a wage bill high enough and prioritizes the recruitment of a veterinary Laboratory specialist, the veterinary Laboratory will remain idle, according to Omony.
A total of 1,599 deaths between 2017 and 2022 were linked to organophosphate (pesticide) poisoning, researchers from Uganda National Institute of Public Health (UNIPH) and the Health ministry found.This information is in one of the reports presented yesterday during the 9th National Field Epidemiology Conference in Kampala.
The study led by Mr Robert Zavuga was based on the data from the District Health Information System (of the Health ministry), which is received from health facilities across the country.“A total of 37,883 (average of 6,314 per year) organophosphate (OP) [health facility] admissions and 1,599 (average of 267 per year) deaths were reported,” the report reads.
OP admission was defined by researchers as a hospital stay due to suspected OP poisoning. In contrast, OP poisoning death was defined as inpatient death with OP poisoning listed as the cause of death.The researchers linked the poisoning to the widespread use of OP pesticides by farmers in the country amid limited knowledge of how to use the pesticides safely.
“Uganda has an agricultural-based economy with widespread use of organophosphate-based pesticides. This elevates the risk for OP poisoning in the population,” the report reads further.According to the report, the overall average incidence was 15 organophosphate admissions per 100,000 persons.
On areas, sex and age that are most affected, the report indicates, “residents of Ankole Sub-region were more affected while those in Lango Sub-region were least affected.”“Males had a higher incidence of organophosphate poisoning than females. Children under 5 years had a higher incidence than persons above 5 years (20 vs 14/100,000),” the report said.
Overall, 1,599 (average of 267 per year) deaths were reported between 2017 and 2022. Residents in Kampala had the highest overall case fatality rate (CFR) while those in Teso had the lowest (CFR: 8.5 percent vs 2.2 percent),” the report reads.
According to the report released yesterday, “there was more than 3-fold decline in incidence of OP poisoning admissions per 100,000 population from 2017-2022,” however, the researchers noted, “there was no significant change in the case fatality rate of organophosphate poisoning.”
“The incidence of organophosphate poisoning admissions declined throughout the study period. Since 2014, Uganda has implemented periodic public awareness campaigns about safe use of pesticides for small-holder farmers and pesticide dealers,” the report says.
“These campaigns have included sensitisation about responsible handling to reduce risk of poisoning and environmental pollution.
Additional campaigns targeting government pesticide regulators, non-governmental organisations, and media have also been implemented to address the dangers of organophosphate poisoning,” it adds.
The report says Uganda has also implemented the Agricultural Chemical Control Act to use less toxic pesticides, which may be contributing to the reduction in organophosphate poisonings.“To continue this decline, it is important to monitor and strengthen these interventions,” the researchers from UNIPH and Health ministry recommended.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is due to publish a new Energy Sector Strategy before the end of 2023. A total of 130 civil society organizations from over 40 countries have released a statement calling on the EBRD to end finance for all fossil fuels, including gas.
From 2018 to 2021, the EBRD invested EUR 2.9 billion in the fossil energy sector, with the majority of this support going to gas. This makes it the third biggest funder of fossil fuels among all multilateral development banks, behind the World Bank Group and the Islamic Development Bank.
The EBRD has already excluded coal and upstream oil and gas fields from its financing. The draft Energy Sector Strategy further excludes oil transportation and oil-fired electricity generation. However, the draft strategy would continue to allow some investment in new fossil gas pipelines and other transportation infrastructure, as well as gas power generation and heating.
In the statement, the civil society organizations point out that any new support to gas risks locking in outdated energy infrastructure in places that need investments in clean energy the most. At the same time, they highlight, ending support to fossil gas is necessary, not only for climate security, but also for ensuring energy security, since continued investment in gas exposes countries of operation to high and volatile energy prices that can have a severe impact on their ability to reach development targets. Moreover, they underscore that supporting new gas transportation infrastructure is not a solution to the current energy crisis, given that new infrastructure would not come online for several years, well after the crisis has passed.
The signatories of the statement call on the EBRD to amend the Energy Sector Strategy to
fully exclude new investments in midstream and downstream gas projects;
avoid loopholes involving the use of unproven or uneconomic technologies, as well as aspirational but meaningless mitigation measures such as “CCS-readiness”; and
strengthen the requirements for financial intermediaries where the intended nature of the sub-transactions is not known to exclude fossil fuel finance across the entire value chain.
Farmers in Rubanda district are living in fear that they may be hit by famine due to the prolonged drought that has greatly affected the area. This comes after the area was hit by heavy rains in the month of May 2023, which left most of the gardens washed away, and since then the dry season has started up to date.
This is the first of its kind for Rubanda district and Kigezi at large to undergo such a prolonged drought.
According to farmers, this is the first of its kind for Rubanda to go through a long drought, adding that they are in fear that they may be hit by famine since they were used to receiving rains at the beginning of August, which is not the case this year. They add that even the seedlings that they had planted excepting that the rains would come have all dried up by the long spell.
Farmers also say that they don’t know what could be the cause that has stopped the rains,adding that the government should come up with a program that provides them with seedlings.
Akampurira Prossy Mbabazi, a woman Member of Parliament for Rubanda District, says that the issue of drought is not only in Rubanda District; however, this is the first of its kind. She adds that the drought comes after the area was hit by heavy rains, which caused a lot of challenges, adding that now it is the drought that may affect the farmers.
Akampurira further says that, as a leader,she will continue to educate farmers on better methods of farming depending on climate change.
Kikafunda Evelyne, founder of Green Environment Promotion (GEP), says it’s sad that farmers in Rubanda district and Kigezi at large are experiencing a long drought. She attributes it to problems of environmental degradation that include swamps being reclaimed, deforestation, and plastic pollution, adding that this is an indication that people don’t mind about the environment.
Kikafunda calls upon all people to take part in protecting the environment, adding that environmentalists should devise means on how to protect the environment.
It’s now been four months since it last rained in the districts of greater Kabale, that is, Rubanda, Kabale, and Rukiga districts, as well as other parts of the Kigezi Subregion.