With assistance from the First Mile Community Health Program and the Department of Community Health (DoCH), a team of 40 undergraduate medical students and four Masters of Public Health (MPH) students from the Faculty of Medicine (FoM), Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST), carried out a three-day emergency response outreach in the Bunagana town council, Kisoro district in southwest Uganda.
They carried out Community Total Led Sanitation (CTLS), a deworming activity for children under five, and chlorine-based community disinfection using their skills to date and the technical assistance of committed DoCH supervisors.
Both the host community and the refugee community in the Bunagana town council benefited from this.
The MUST team was hosted by the Kisoro district local government leadership on Friday, July 22, under the leadership of the LC5, the assistant Chief Administrative Oficer (CAO), and the deputy RDC.
The leadership gave the group permission to carry out the emergency response outreach.
Associate Professor Edgar Mulogo, the team’s leader and the Director of MUST’s First Mile Community Health program, praised the Kisoro district local government leadership for the gracious welcome.
“As MUST, we are dedicated to responding to community needs in our catchment for which Kisoro is part through health outreaches and other health service delivery programs. Early this month, July 06-07, 2022, we worked with local authorities here to map the affected areas where we found the glaring challenge of Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) in Bunagana Town Council. We hope that our partnership with Kisoro district local government will be strengthened and sustained through these engagements,’’ Prof. Mulogo said.
Accoridng to the Assistant CAO Kisoro district, the continuous disputes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in particular the Bunagana town council, are causing an influx of refugees.
This has led to health issues like poor sanitation, a lack of medicines, and a shortage of medical professionals.
He thanked MUST for helping them deal with these issues.
The LC5 chairperson of the Kisoro district local government, Hon. Abel Bizimana, applauded the attempt to organize emergency response outreaches inside the communities, particularly those aimed at vulnerable populations like the refugees.
In his address, he informed the MUST team of the historical context of Kisoro district, which should be utilised in identifying and developing health interventions for improved service delivery.
From more than 100 households, 1120 young children under the age of five were dewormed. Additionally, Bunagana Town Council, Kibaya, Gatsibo, Kanyampiriko, Nyarutovu and Kara villages were disinfected with chlorine to destroy the germs that are likely to result in an outbreak of cholera after extensive open defecation in the aforementioned regions.
Gatsibo village’s Healthworker said that as refugees descended on the region, all of the pit latrines for the host communities became full, leaving the growing population little choice but to distribute their feces around.
He thanked MUST for helping them out by spraying and disinfecting the sites before it started raining, which would have likely spread the fecal matter that would cause an outbreak of cholera, typhoid, and other diseases associated to poor sanitation.
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