President of Liberia, George Weah recently declared all Public universities free: COURTESY PHOTO

The Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) has advised the Uganda government to borrow a leaf from Liberia and make University education free to all Ugandan students.

In a press conference held at Uganda house on Wednesday, Michael Osinde, the UPC spokesperson showed concern on the number of students admitted to higher education compared to the number of students who are given government scholarships each year.

“As UPC, we welcome the recent initiative in Liberia, where government has taken on full sponsorship of university/tertiary education at all public universities compared to Uganda, where government caters for only 4,000 university students annually.” he said.

The president of Liberia,George Weah, declared all public universities in Liberia tuition-free which Osinde believes was a good move.

“Uganda needs to take keen interest in studying how such countries are managing to achieve that grand objective and borrow a leaf from them if the country is to achieve education for all,” Osinde added.

The speaker further expressed fear at how the world is fast producing highly skilled manpower that Uganda’s education system can not produce.

“We therefore urge government to heavily invest in vocational training institutions, purposely to enhance skills development,” the UPC spokesperson remarked.

Osinde wished the primary seven candidates success in the forthcoming Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE) 2018 and on this note demanded that government devises means of neutralizing the school dues to ensure a free education for all.

“UPC calls on the parents to strategically engage their children in domestic work and skillful activities, which can bring income to the family in order to address the above captioned challenge as well as mitigating the negative consequences during the forthcoming vacation,” Osinde said.

“Some have prematurely opted to leave school without attaining a PLE certificate due to teenage pregnancy, high increment in school fees among others, yet writing PLE is a fundamental step towards success,” the party mouth piece noted.

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According to an official with the World Health Organization, two treatment units have been established in the western border districts of Kasese and Bundibugyo to respond to any deadly Ebola outbreak,

“Ebola Treatment Units are where patients can get the best care possible with access to rehydration methods and protection from infecting their family and community,” Yonas Tegegn Woldemariam, Uganda’s WHO Representative said.

Woldemariam said the treatment units were fully equipped and ready to manage any Ebola cases in the East African country. Although there are no confirmed Ebola cases in Uganda, the country remains on high alert following an outbreak in the neighboring Congo.

Ebola is highly contagious and can cause a range of symptoms including fever, vomiting, diarrhea, generalized pain and in many cases internal and external bleeding. The WHO says as of Aug. 21, there are 103 confirmed cases of Ebola in the DRC, with 61 deaths 32 were confirmed and 27 were probable.

Mortality rates of Ebola, according to WHO, are high, with the human case fatality rate ranging from 50 percent to 89 percent, depending on viral sub-type.

The current Congolese outbreak mirrors the 2014 West African outbreak that saw more than 11,000 deaths, mostly in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and Liberia. There were also 11 cases of Ebola in the United States tied to the outbreak, including four deaths.

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The report noted that ‘The epidemic’s unprecedented escalation is linked to the region’s lack of experience with the virus, combined with a host of factors including culture, history, geography, weak health systems, over-centralized governance with inadequate accountability systems, fear, mistrust of state institutions, poor infrastructure and a much-delayed international response.’ This could be referring to any of the regions of Africa seeing that there are similar conditions across the continent; that is why the recommendations given to West Africa can very well be implemented by any of the other regions.

Selected Key Recommendations

• Strengthen epidemiological surveillance subsystems and response capacity at national, community and district levels;
• Strengthen governance and accountability of the sector in particular at prefecture/district level, including through adequate funding by the government, capacity-building in health management, communication and social mobilization, and popular participation;
• Equip health facilities with medical and industrial equipment in accordance with minimum national standards by level of care, ensuring that maintenance services are put in place to prolong the operational use of the equipment;
• Strengthen the framework for consultation and dialogue at the local/community level with the effective participation of women and youth;
• Strengthen formal and informal civic and citizenship education;
• Increase transparency in the management of land and natural resources.
• Ensure that all schools (formal and non-formal) are safe through investment in school water and sanitation facilities such that teachers and pupils have access to clean water for hand-washing; also, systems of temperature screening to monitor students’ health need to be introduced and referral mechanisms established with local health centres;
• Carryout good local awareness campaigns and community engagement
• Convey well-developed, harmonized and clear health crisis prevention messages to critical target groups including supervisors, teachers, learners and parents;
• Invest in youth employment and skills-building schemes, in particular through employment-intensive infrastructure programmes, to ensure that loss of employment does not further alienate a youth population
• Ensure that women are able to access information about how to prevent and respond to the epidemic,
• Integrate gender equality and women’s participation, including building the capacity of women’s groups, associations and traditional leaders to strengthen response mechanisms;
• Promote the establishment of an all-Africa Youth Corps along the lines recommended by the African Union;
• Actively promote labour-based infrastructure projects to reduce the high levels of unemployed and unskilled youth;
• Employment-intensive investment programmes should be designed for job-friendly and youth-friendly environments.
• Joint border management should be enhanced especially for disaster management; because unsupervised movement across borders aided the spread of the epidemic.

If East Africa, along with the rest of Africa, established these protocols we would have a system to abate the recurrence of such a tragic crisis hence saving thousands of lives. The recommendations given in the report go beyond Ebola-proofing the continent but also improving the economies and education systems of the nations.

Read full Report here:Recovering From The Ebola Crisis

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I am also the CEO of ABSOLUTE HEALTH SERVICES in Ghana and I am a Ghanaian.

Due to the researches and projects I am doing in hepatitis B, I have linked up with companies who manufacture the hepatitis B vaccine to reduce the price and they are also giving a promotional package of FREE HEPATITIS B STRIPS for testing of the hepatitis B virus depending on the quantity a particular country or company buys. For example if you buy 1,000,000(one million) doses of the vaccine you will get about 100,000 or 200,000 free hepatitis B strips.

So the more you buy the vaccines, the more strips you get. This is to encourage people to go for screening and know their status and also to get the vaccine at a cheap price. I have been in contact with Uganda’s permanent health secretary and other doctors in Uganda to see how they can make it possible to get some of these vaccines since the virus is fast spreading in your country.

President Yoweri Museveni advocated for mass immunization, screening and sensitization in April this year. Well, as journalists, I hope you can reach out to the Government, health minister Dr Christine Andoa and other big pharmacy shops in Uganda to get the opportunity to buy these vaccines to so people can buy it cheaper as compared to the 40,000 UGX being sold by some of them.

The vaccines I am talking about are WHO standard vaccines used all over the world. Each dose is 9,000 UGX for children and 20,000 UGX for adults. All these prices come with free hepatitis B strips. There are so many strategies to fight the infection and my campaign brings massive number who will call for the vaccines. Thank you very much and try and reply to this mail.

By Samuel quao

Founder of Absolute Health Foundation in Liberia

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