Use of unsafe medicines a key lead in disability

Seven year old Jeremiah Tenywa has been in pain for over three years after an injection which was meant to cure his malaria but instead turn his life to a misery. Tenywa a primary one pupil at Little Muheji Primary school developed what doctors described as a post injection paralysis.

His mother Esther Nabirye took him to a small clinic in Nansana, Wakiso district in 2009 where he was diagnosed with malaria and he was injected on the buttocks with quinine medicine that is when the problem of her son started.

“Upon reaching home, the boy could hardly stand and I immediately took him back to the clinic and reported to the doctor that my child was developing a disability,” she narrates.

Nabirye said that she got confused and did not know what to do  because her son was slowly developing disability and  was advised to take Tenywa to Katalemwa Chesire Home for treatment.

Emmanuel Ssekidde a psychiatric nursing officer at Katalemwa Chesire Home said that Tenywa was injected in the muscles instead of the vain which left right his leg lame.

“Quinine can cause paralysis if accidentally injected into a nerve or muscle.  Stop using quinine and call your doctor if you have  serious side effects,” Ssekidde said.

He was Thursday speaking at press conference organized by Community Health and Information Network (CHAIN) at Fairway Hotel in Kampala.

 Ssekidde said that in a month the home receives 60 patients whose disability has been cause by injections. He however said that the disability can be corrected if the patient is taken to the hospital earlier enough before the situation gets out of hand.

He said that part from other diseases that affects children, unsafe use of medicines the second and wrongly administered injections are the leading in causes of disabilities at the home.

Regina Namatta the project coordinator of CHAIN said that 50 percent of patient in the country failed to use medicine correctly resulting into wastage of scarce resources, development of resistance and wild spread health hazards.

“The practice of unsafe use of medicine is a global public health problem causing death, disability and injury tom adults, children and unborn babies,” She said.

Namatta said that the most common abused medicines are antibiotics, adding that the situation is worsened further by the fact that majority of the private outlets are manned by unqualified medical personnel, and those that are managed by qualified personnel, they patients do not also get sufficient information on how to use the medicine.

Ruth Mukiibi one of the victims of unsafe medicine, said that last year she lost her pregnancy  when she suffered urinary tract infection (  UTI) she  was prescribed Metronidazole but did not cure  the infection.

She later went Mulago hospital and was given Cipiophelaxine to heal the infection but instead terminated her pregnancy.

Mukiibi went back to the doctor after getting a miscarriage and the doctor whom she did not want to name apologized that he was sorry he gave her a medicine which was not supposed to be given to an expectant mothers.

“The doctor told me that he was sorry that he had killed my baby, I would n’t  have taken Cipiophelaxine while pregnant,” she said.

New case of TB increases in Uganda

For too long, tuberculosis has not received sufficient attention. The result of this neglect is needless suffering, in 2010 alone; nearly 9 million people fell ill with TB and 1.4 million died, with 95 per cent of these deaths occurring in developing countries.   These numbers make tuberculosis the second top infectious killer of adults worldwide.

 In Uganda we saw the new cases of TB increasing from 45,000 to 49,000 people. Dr Francis Adatu, the Program Manager National TB and Leprosy says Uganda is ranked 16th among the 22 high burden countries.

He says that the impact reverberates far beyond the individuals directly affected. TB takes a heavy toll on families and communities.

Dr Adutu also says that millions of children have lost their parents. Children who are exposed to sick family members are at high risk of contracting the disease.

This year’s World TB day will be celebrated under theme: “Stop TB in our lifetime” and the main celebrations will take place in Kabale district this Saturday.

He says that far too many go untreated, since TB is often difficult to diagnose and treat in children,  this year they have  aim to expand awareness of how children are affected by the disease.

Kampala clouded in second-hand tobacco smoke

You enter a Kampala bar late in the evening and the entire place is engulfed in smoke. The atmosphere is colored with a grey haze from cigarettes.

You venture out of the bar momentarily and smell your clothes and hair and the scent of tobacco pollutes your nose. Now imagine how absorbent your lungs are compared to the cotton fabric of your cloth.

Second-hand smoke, also known as environmental tobacco smoke, is a mixture of sidestream smoke from the burning tip of the cigarette and mainstream smoke exhaled by a smoker, with some 4,000 chemical compounds, including almost 70 known or probable human carcinogens (cancer-causing agents).

Inhaling second-hand smoke, or passive smoking, kills children and adults who don’t smoke. It causes lung cancer and heart disease in people who have never smoked. Even brief exposure can damage cells in ways that set the cancer process in motion.

According to the World Health Organization, non-smokers exposed to second-hand smoke at home or at work increase their heart disease risk by 26-30% and lung cancer risk by 20-30%.

Richard Carmona, the former US Surgeon General, said in 2006: “The evidence is now indisputable that second-hand smoke is an alarming public health hazard, responsible for thousands of premature deaths among non-smokers each year.”

Smoking in public places, including bars, restaurants, shopping centers and public transportation was banned in Uganda in 2004 when the National Environment (Control of Smoking in Public Places) regulations introduced by the former Environment Minister Kahinda Otafire were passed.

This followed a high ruling in December 2002 declaring smoking in public places a violation of non-smokers’ constitutional right to a clean and healthy environment.

The Ugandan High Court instructed the National Environment Management Authority to formulate a law against public smoking which was enacted in 2004 and states that: “No person shall smoke a tobacco product or a lighted cigarette in an enclosed, indoor area of a public place.”

But a study I recently conducted on Uganda’s compliance with the regulations on control of public smoking in bars and restaurants in Kampala tells a tragic public health story of thousands of people in Kampala inhaling second-hand smoke.

The majority of bars in Kampala blatantly break the law by allowing public smoking on their premises. Only four of the 23 bars I sampled in Kampala enforce the ban on public smoking. Ironically, even in bars and restaurants where a ‘no smoking’ sign was prominently displayed, smoking continued unabated.

The sample of five areas of Kampala including Kisementi, Kabalagala, included the most popular bars frequented by middle class Ugandans.

The study, made possible by the US-based Campaign for Tobacco Free-Kids, suggests that the law against public smoking in Kampala remains on the books with no enforcement to speak of. With the passing out of environmental police, by the Uganda police last year one can only hope the situation will be ameliorated.

Even with the proposed 2010 Tobacco Control bill having had its first reading in parliament and a Tobacco Control policy awaiting cabinet consideration, enforcement of the tobacco control law will remain critical to the health of millions of Ugandans.

Respiratory symptoms among bar workers in Scotland decreased by 26 percent after smoke-free legislation was implemented in 2006 and asthmatic bar workers experienced reduced airway inflammation and reported an improved quality of life as a result.

In Uruguay, the enforcement of a 100% smoke-free law has reduced hospital admissions for heart attacks by 22%.

Many think that as long as they don’t smoke they will escape the now scientifically proven 15 cancers associated with cigarette smoking. But sadly, it is not enough to not smoke.

Infant mortality rates fall- Survey

Preliminary Uganda Demographic Health Survey report 2011 results are out, showing slightly improvement in the maternal and child health indicators.

The number of children that die before their first birth day has slightly reduced with preliminary results showing an infant mortality rate of 54 deaths for every 1,000 in 2011 from 76 deaths for every 1,000 live births in 2006.

The results from the survey done by Uganda Bureau of Statistics every five years also show that the use of contraceptive by married women has slightly moved up to 30 percent from 24 percent in 2006 while the use of modern contraceptive has also increased from 18 percent in 2006 to 26 percent in 2011.

Preliminary results which KC has seen show that the percentage of women giving in health facilities has increased to 57 percent compared to 42 percent in 2006. Also, 59 percent of women in Uganda are now giving birth with the assistance of skilled birth attendant.

However, there is still a large disparity between the rural and urban women with 54 percent of rural women seeking skilled attendants compared to 90 percent of women in the urban areas.

The survey also revealed that the fertility rates in Uganda have slightly declined to 6.2 children per woman from 6.7 in 2006. In the urban areas the rate stand at 3.8 children per woman declining from 4.4 in 2006, while in the rural areas it stands at 6.8 down from 7.1 in 2006.
The survey is one of the key studies that gives an overview of the health situation in Uganda and provides information to guide the health sector’s future interventions and reforms activities.
“The issues to do with behavioral change take some time,” Dr Jennifer Wanyana, the assistant commissioner in the ministry of health, said commenting on the results.

She says it was now easy to accelerate progress from the small change. “Reduction in fertility is not drastic. It will decline, if a woman had an average of six children five years ago, that average would still remain in the next five years. But we have seen fertility rates fall from 6.7 to 6.2 which is a positive leap. These indicators take time to register a difference,” she stressed.

Dr Wanyana said the health sector was facing the problem of the availability of service providers and shortage of human resource although funding was increasing.

A member of parliament on social service committee, Dr Medrad Bitekyerezo said there was a big population increase in Uganda coupled with ignorance of reproductive health matters.

“ The attitude of Ugandans towards contraceptive use is negative. It is worsened by poor education of girls and some men. If girls were educated, they could use contraceptives as well as the men,” Dr Bitekyerezo said.
“ We shall not meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) if there is low funding in the health sector. We cannot depend on donors to fund health,” he observed.

He said that many children were malnourished as a result of poverty . “How many families in the north and eastern Uganda can afford milk every day? If the mothers are hungry, the children will be malnourished,” he said.

Emily Katarikawe , the managing director of Uganda Health Marketing Group said that many women either do not know about contraceptives or have no access to them.

“About 74 percent of the population is below 24 years of age and should be using modern contraceptives to prevent unplanned pregnancies. We are not reaching the people we should be reaching,” Ktarikawe said.

She added that mothers were not following child spacing of two years between each birth as recommended by World Health Organization.

“Families are churning out many children. The attitude of individuals not using family planning methods and that of health workers must be studied,” she says.

Maternal and child health mortality have been recognized by the UN as key indicators for development. The MDG 4 and goal 5 target set out to reduce by two thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under –five mortality rate and maternal mortality rate consecutively.

Uganda, like other sub-Sahara countries in, is not progressing well on these two targets. UN is concerned that child death are falling in many countries, but not quickly enough to reach the target.
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Grain of science

A new study in the journal European Neuropsychopharmacology says European women are almost two-and-a-half times more likely to suffer from depression than men. In pure numbers, this means that of the 30.3 million depressed Europeans, about 23 million are women.

According to the study’s author, Hans-Ulrich Wittchen, the number of depressive episodes in women has also doubled in the last 30 years.

“In females, you see these incredibly high rates of depressive episodes at times when they sometimes have their babies, where they raise children, where they have to cope with the double responsibility of job and family,” he said in a statement.

This is not the fi rst time researchers have highlighted the high rate of depressive disorders in women. Statistics say American women are twice as likely to be depressed as men.

A 2010 British study found that 18.7% of women over the age of 50 experienced depressive systems. By contrast, only 11.8% of men in the same age group experienced similar symptoms.

The question, then, is not whether women are more depressed than men, but why they are. And concurrently, are women really unhappier than they were three decades ago?

According to Prof. Wittchen, part of the problem is the “tremendous burden” of trying to do it all that curse of the 21st century woman who wants to have a family and a career.

Indeed, recent research found that “supermoms” who try to have stellar careers while juggling a full family life and expect that they can be good at both are at greater risk for depression.

Another theory, then, is that women are just better at asking for help. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, almost four times as many men as women die by suicide.

Another survey of 30,000 people in 30 countries found that women are much more likely to say that they are stressed than men under similar circumstances.

Wittchen also said depression is most likely to strike women between the ages of 25 and 40, when they are at their most fertile. Also at play, then, are the hormonal changes during and after pregnancy.

Experts believe that these hormonal shifts may act as a trigger for depression in some women and that women who have premenstrual mood changes may also be more vulnerable to depression at other times when exposed to significant hormonal fluctuations, such as after childbirth or during the transition to menopause.

President warns against de-gazetting park land for agriculture production

President Yoweri Museveni has warned the people of Rwenzori region against de-gazetting parts of the Rwenzori national park for land cultivation saying the region attracts tourists who bring in the much needed foreign earnings.

Tourism, he said, has a potential of US$ 800 billion on the world market and that the Government is committed to promoting it for the benefit of the people. Giving the example of Spain, he said that the country earns US$ 23billion per year from the tourism industry alone and that Uganda has the potential to earn good income from the sector. 

Uganda’s tourism earnings increased from US $165.3m in 2001 to over $600m by 2009, making the industry a robust source of foreign exchange this according to Uganda Tourism Board (UTB) statistics.

The President was speaking at the Zonal Conference on Poverty Alleviation and Enterprise selection organized by State House for Rwenzori Region at Entebbe State House. The ongoing conference organized for each region in Uganda is being attended by technical staff including production officers, NAADS coordinators, and members of parliament, ministers and technical people from stakeholder ministries.

The conference seeks to mobilize and sensitize the people about effective land use through enterprise selection and mix for poverty alleviation. Among other things, it seeks to know enterprise priorities per region that can give an equal or greater income to what a homestead spends, how much homesteads are spending on needs per annum, the average landholding per homestead and identify government intervention gaps.

The President Museveni urged the political leaders and technical personnel to sensitize the people on modern agro-production methods to enable them get maximum returns from their small pieces of land for income and for food security.

He cautioned the people against land fragmentation and called on the local leaders to spare no efforts in addressing the vice. However, he urged leaders to sensitize the people on the best practices to boost incomes and food security on the available land.

President Museveni supported the proposal to introduce legislature against people who introduce diseases of plants or animals as well as those involved in fake veterinary and crop drugs. He urged them to plant indigenous grasses and propagate them to increase the quality of livestock feeds.

He commended the Kyegegwa District delegation for their proposal to engage in the production of mangoes. He assured the gathering that the Government is to facilitate the provision of solar water pumps to promote irrigation. He noted that the Rwenzori region was endowed with a land terrain which does not need pumping water for irrigation and that it can utilize gravity flow schemes.

He revealed that the Government will facilitate the de silting of valley dams and also promote irrigation in Kasese, Kabarole, Bundibugyo and Rwenzori region at large.
President Museveni pledged to provide the people feed mixers, milk coolers and hatcheries for fish and poultry. He proposed that the small land holders should engage in the production of coffee, dairy, poultry, fruits, pigs, bananas and bee keeping while large scale farmers can produce maize and cotton.

The Minister of Agriculture, Hon. Tress Bucanayandi asked the Government to support performing targets for both the technical staff and the politicians.

Empower Girls- Government told

 Women activists have asked government to empower a girl child in order to improve the social and economic status of women in Uganda.

The Kabarole district woman member of Parliament Victoria Businge Rusoke said that government should give girls need an environment that will enhance their potential for better tomorrow.

Rusoke was on Friday addressing a gathering at Kiyomba Primary school playground in Buhesi sub-county in Kabarole district during the International Women’s day celebrations. The day was celebrated under the Theme: “Connecting Girls, Inspiring Futures”.

“It is important to focus on the girl child, re-think and determine their future which will inspire e the women of Uganda,” Rusoke said.

She blamed the Police officers and parents for conniving with criminals to abuse the girls’ rights, instead of protecting them.

“It breaks my heart to see the police force which is expected to protect a girl child join hands with criminals to drag parents of defiled, raped and tortured girls into being compromised by offenders who give them little money and they withdraw cases or they don’t report at all,” Rusoke said.

 She said that women in Uganda have been struggling to fight for their rights and thanked the National Resistance Movement (NRM) for bringing them from kitchen to boardrooms.

“Today we are looking back at the past struggles of a woman, compliments her  and most importantly, to look ahead to the untapped potential and opportunities that awaits future generation of women,” Rusoke said.

 Rusoke however said that maternal mortality has remain a big concern for the health  of women despite the fact the number of women dying while giving birth has reduced.

“Although the number of women who die due to pregnancy complications declined from 505 in 2001 to 435 per 100,000 in 2006, its still below the Millennium Development Goal’s target in reducing maternal mortality to 131 deaths per 100,000 live births by 2015,” she emphasized.

Margret Ziwa Nantongo, a legislator in the East African Assembly called for zero tolerance on sexual harassment and abuse in homes, communities, schools and at work places.

Ziwa urged parents to educate their daughters saying that education is a basic human rights and a key to the empowerment of women and the girl child, hence achieving gender equality in education.

Over 70 outstanding women were recognized for their effort in inspiring a girl child in the district. Notable among those were the Queen Mother of Toro Kingdom Best Kemigisa, Elizabeth Bagaya, Robinah Bwitwa of Travellers Inn in Fort Portal municipality among others.

Ends

She uses bees to make life sweeter

 At first sight she does not capture your attention until you discover her personality and character.

 She noted that I did not believe that as youthful as she looks, she can be a farmer and activist for food security in her community. Yet look can be deceptive.

As soon as Sofia Night Apophia saw me, she immediately told me that when a home has enough food to feed its members, it’s one way of granting food stability in the community and country at large.

Sofia a resident of Munobwa village, Hima Parish, Bugaki sub-county in Kyenjojo district grew up knowing that in order for the country to ensure food security and avoid scarcity of food and prolonged famine, each home must have enough food all the time.

Sofia is connived that Uganda has the potential to eradicate extreme hunger and poverty if each family engages in production and stocking food. She believes if all Ugandans enhance food storing it will reduce on the problem of malnourished children in the country. 

“Ensuring food security where people have access to enough food, nutritionally adequate diet, is also vital to meet the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by half the proportion of people suffering from hunger,” says the mother of two.

Mentoring young generation

 Mentoring young generation is what drove Sofia to construct granaries in Kitumba , East Division in Fort Portal Municipality to teach the young generation the importance of stocking food.

Sofia has partnered with Akaswa ka Tooro a non-government organization to train young girls in food security and production.

“People’s mentality has changed on stocking food, we have to teach them young so that we prepare their attitude towards storing food at an early age,” Sofia says.

 Sofia also teaches the community to engage in production of food crop that are long lasting like cassava and immune to drought.

Jane Kabasinguzi one of beneficiaries of Sofia’s initiative said that she used to work in tea plantation and all the money she used to earn was going back to buying food yet she had a small land to do food production.

“I realized, all the money I was paid at Munobwa tea factory was ending in buying food, I did not know that I could put to good use my small piece of land and produce food for my family and for sell. One day Sofia called a meeting and told us the importance of having our food. Since then I have never looked back,” Kabasinguzi says.

Innocent Muhumuza is full of praises of the efforts made by Sofia to sensitize them on food production.  Muhumuza says, through the meetings organized by Sofia, the community has benefited a lot from her in terms knowledge and partnership.

Muhumuza disclosed that Sofia lobbied the Rotary of Iganga for them and each family of Munobwa village got a water tank for harvesting water.

Muhumuza owns three acres of banana, but after getting advice from Sofia, he also started a cabbage project to increase on his household income.

Beekeeping and community

 Sofia is so passion about beekeeping and her community to ensure that the quality of their standards of living improves.  The love for beekeeping made her to give up on accountancy professional to keep bees and serve her community.

A career she started at Bunyangabu Bee keeping Community (BBC) in Kabarole District in 2000, Sofia has transferred her experience to her community by organizing and uniting all beekeepers and actively involves them in bee keeping activities so as to improve their economic welfare.

She formed Munobwa Tukore Namani Beekeeping group in 2010 and it has 25 members who are all engaged in bee keeping and food production. She constructed apiary house and bought over 70 beehives to give to the community to generate income.

She also lobbied Gats International which gave her the beehives, protective gears, and honey processing machines which she distributed to her group.

The group acts as a role model to other neighboring areas to spread the gospel of food security, bee keeping and nutrition among others.

Peter Akorabingi said that, Sofia has taught them how to keep and harvest bees, and the use of propolis and beewax, most of which has been sold in the local market.

“We want to use the knowledge Sofia has given us to be the best in api-culture value chain and community social responsibility in Rwenzori region,” Akorabingi said.

According to Sofia, the bee keeping project will help the community to increase the income and improve on their standards of living.

 She says that the members have been able to get income from honey they harvest from beehives. They harvest 15 kgs of honey from each beehive and sell a kilo at shs 10,000.

“Beekeeping is cheap and does not require a lot of labour. It’s also suitable for old people because it is not tiring,” she says.

 Sofia also harvest other people beehives at fees, charging sh 20,000 per beehive.

Challenges

“We depend on nature to tap bees and if the nature is not our side, they we lose,” she says.

She called me dead walking person, virus man.

For Ugandan banker Moses Arinaitwe learning he was HIV positive when his wife Robinah was HIV negative was the beginning of disagreement and conflict in their relationship.

Moses and Robinah had been together for seven years when HIV knocked on their door.

“She wanted more babies, which I could not give her. She decided to leave me and got married to another man. In fact she has already produced,” Moses says.

Arinaitwe says that, even without the need for more children, their relationship was plagued by conflicts, disagreements and even domestic violence as a result of their HIV discordance. He says his wife accused him of bringing the virus into their home and that he was “stigmatized and discriminated against” in his own home.

He says his wife began sending text messages to his friends and relatives telling them about his health condition and HIV status and called him names like “dead walking person, virus man”.

“She started a war against me and told all our friends and relatives about my HIV status – a reason she was giving of for our separation,” Arinaitwe says.

On once occasion Arinaitwe’s wife brought him a coffin to be buried in when he died, a situation which left him devastated.

“It was too much for me to handle and I had no choice but to let her go so that I could have peace of mind. Her revelation of my status to my friends and relatives made me lose my self esteem among my peers and I stopped going home because my parents were now seeing me as useless and a dead person,” he says.

Like Moses and Robinah, many discordant couples – when one partner is HIV positive and the other HIV negative – are faced with many challenges. In particular, the issue of family planning can pose problems, especially if one partner wants to have babies.

Doctors in Uganda have been researching discordance and why married couples may have different HIV status.

Dr Charles Olaro, the medical director of Fort Portal regional hospital , says HIV negative partners are at risk of getting infected yet there is no system of effective counseling for discordant couples.

Discordant couples represent a critical risk group but it is not yet clear how large a risk this is because the number of discordant couples is increasing, something Dr Olaro partly attributes to the increasing number of people on antiretroviral treatment (ART).

“HIV negative partners are at very high risk of HIV infection from their positive partners, yet service providers have not yet developed effective counseling messages for discordant couples to prevent the infection,” he says.

Dr Olaro notes that judgmental attitudes of partners and society has reinforced denial and secrecy on the part of people living with the virus. In turn, this undermines the efforts being made to mitigate the impacts of HIV and to prevent its transmission.

Dr Olaro says discordance is more common in polygamous unions and among urban couples than their rural counterparts.

Annette Kabasambu, a 38-year-old resident of Kiburara in Kabarole district who is HIV positive, says that when she visited a health facility she was advised to undergo female sterilization as a safe, simple and permanent method of family planning.

She did not want to have more children due to her HIV status but her husband wanted to have a baby boy and kept on insisting that she should conceive.

“I did not want to endanger my life by producing more children and did not want to infect my husband but he kept on insisting that I must give him a baby boy so I had no choice but to go for female sterilization,” she says.

Female sterilization is a permanent method of contraception and is advisable for couples who no longer want to have children. It is a single procedure with lifetime effects and does not need repeated clinic visits. But just like the contraceptive pill, female sterilization does not offer protection against sexually transmitted diseases.

Steve Okoboi of TASO Uganda says a cross-sectional survey of 114 HIV discordant couples conducted in Kampala last year found that participants wanting children and those with multiple sexual partners were less likely to use condoms.

“We see many HIV positive women coming up for six times pregnant and we know that there are going to be big problems of mortality rates and an increased number of children being born with HIV,” Okoboi says.

Many discordant couples want to conceive for multiple reasons including to ensure lineage continuity and posterity, to secure a relationships, and due to pressure from relatives to reproduce. However, they face many challenges such as the risk of HIV transmission to partner and child and the failure of health systems to offer safe methods of family planning. Strategies such as condom use and abstinence have been suggested as important for discordant couples.

Despite the fact that many medics are urging discordant couples to use family planning methods to reduce the mortality rate, there is a lack of political will in addressing the issue with prominent politicians including Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni and leading politician Abdul Naduli encouraging couples to produce as many children as possible.
End

It should be every woman’s dream to preserve food- Says Businge

Many call her a traditional woman because she still believes that every family should have a granary in a home.

A practice, she learnt from her grandmother, Grace Businge says that it is shame for women to stay without granaries and gardens of sweet potatoes, dry maize and cassava gardens.

Her compound is surrounded by fruits ranging from oranges, paw-paw, mangos, guavas, sugarcanes, carrots, onions, green paper among others. She also planted mangos in her farm to provide shed for her cows and get fruits from at the same time.

“Right from my childhood I knew it’s a shame and a high level of laziness for a woman to be there without a home garden. Husbands and children look up to us for food security and as women we must provide it at all times,” she says.

Businge 49 a resident of Nsoro I, Kitereza ward, Kijura town council in Kabarole district says that the prolonged drought has not affected her because she stocks food to prepare for unpredicted famine.

Businge has no kind words for women who have abandoned the practice of stocking food in the name of modernity.

She says that if women were stocking food, Uganda would not have had the food crisis and increase in prices would not surface.

“High food prices were a result of people who have refused to stock school because they think that is not modern. I was hearing people crying that food is becoming expensive but my family was not affected because I has enough millet, beans, maize, dry yams, cassava, obutuzi ( mushrooms), and others things in stock,” she says.

 She says that in her home, there are more than ten people and she ensures that they get food and have a surplus for selling.

In her bid to preserve food, Businge dries yams and cassava to keep them for a long time for purposes of food security. The mother of four also dries cabbage, eggplants carrots, dodo and other assorted vegetable to prepare for the times when source is scarce so that her family does not lack what to eat.

 Businge says that she has learnt a way how to protect her food stored in a traditional granary by cutting iron sheets in around shape and put it around the stands of the granary to prevent ants and rats from entering her granary.

Businge gives out seeds of sweet potatoes, cassava, Irish maize, banana suckers to her community members so that they can have enough food.

“ I teach my community good practices of farming and give them seedlings because I want us to be uniform and stay on the same page on terms of developing our area and fight famine,” she says.

Oranges did the miracles for Businge

Businge says that when she came to Kijura in 1997, people told her that oranges cannot grow in the area and she gave it a try , but to her surprise the oranges came out well and the harvest was perfect. She says that she now earns sh 50, 0000 every day from her oranges.

“People tried to discourage me that oranges can never grow here, I decided to plant three oranges in my compound as a trail but I was shocked to harvest four bags from them. This was a turning point for me to start it as project for income generation,” Businge said.

 People starting coming to her home to learn good methods of farming and she was offering it for free with a dream of more people acquiring the knowledge so that her community can improve in agriculture.

In 2003, NAADS was rolled in Hakibale sub-county in Kabarole district; Businge sold banana sackers to the program and used the money to buy more land to expand her farming activities.

Businge has made over 50 beehives to distribute to women and the youth in her community as one way of fighting poverty.

“Honey is on demand and I believe it will transform people lives,” she said. Because of efforts, her village was made a mode zone for NADDS.

Businge does not only stock food but also goes for another extra mile of harvesting water for her home use, watering her plants and animals. She constructed an underground tank of 50,000 litters to tap rain water.

 “Harvesting water is very important for every family; it’s a cheap way of getting clean water. Italso save them from searching for water during dry season like now we are experiencing,” she adds.

Businge is determined to change make a difference in people’s lives  by all means , a reason  she has engaged in fish farming as a model to teach her community how to do it in order to increase on the nutrition of their families and income.

Grace Businge keeps only two cows on zero grazing which gives her 40 litters of milk in dry season and 80 in rain season.

Advice

“It’s about patience and good planning that we can achieve food security in this country. People should also take advantage of our good soils and the markets available in the neighboring countries,” she counsels.

President Museveni inspired her

In 1995, when president Museveni was moving around the country sensitizing the masses of the program popular known as “ okulembeka” it’s when Businge realized that something was wrong in Uganda.

She recollects Museveni’s words of encouragement of using small land for profitable projects and when she went back home, she decided to put what the president taught into practice. 

She incorporated the knowledge she learnt from President Museveni and her grandmother to start the war of food security.

 “The president changed my way of thinking, because I knew that money was only coming from business like selling in shops but after his talk, I told myself that I am not going into business and choose to do farming,” she says.

 Rose Atwoki, one of the women that benefited from Businge says that she has changed people’s attitude toward food security and now more people stock food.

“Businge us sweet potatoes vines (emikamba), cassava cuttings to improve on the food security. She is a role model for us and gives us information and skills in everything we do,” she says.

Mable Kusemererwa another beneficiary says that Businge has taught them to bake bread, make herbal jelly and soap to improve on their household income.

“I copied the technology she used to construct a underground water tank which has helped me to save time searching for water,” Juliet Kahunde said.

 Achievements

 Businge has acquired a motorcycle tractor of sh 4.5m to transport her produce from the gardens in order to reduce the postharvest loses.

Businge, who started with one acre, has been able to expand to six acres of land, using the money she gets from matoke and oranges. Businge earns sh 800,000 from her banana plantation every month.

She also takes care of twelve orphans and vulnerable children, giving those scholastic materials and two of them are at the university level.  She has formed eight groups of women and youth Kijura Women and Youth Development Association   to start the gospel of food security, solve the unemployment problem and fight poverty in households.

However her most significant achievement which she is proud of is having food for her family all the time.

 Challenges

 Businge says that the most challenge her community faces is that the area is sounded by tea plantations and most people have small pieces of land while others don’t have at all.

She says that this has affected the food security in area. “If you don’t have land then you cannot have food,” she says. She identified drunkard and less commitment of men towards food security, saying that all the burden of food security have been left to women.

“Women are overload with work, producing and looking after children while men are busy drinking. Men are not supportive,” she adds.

Businge is also disappointed with some of her community members whom she gave seeding and they ended up eating them instead of planting them to multiply.

Uganda agriculture sector to benefit from USD 63million

The African Development Bank has approved a US$ 63.24 million fund package for the implementation of a 5-year, multi-CGIAR Center project dubbed “Support to Agricultural Research for Development of Strategic Crops in Africa” (SARD-SC).

It is a research, science, and technology development initiative aimed at enhancing the productivity and income derived from cassava, maize, rice, and wheat four of the six commodities that African Heads of States, through the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Program, have defined as strategic crops for Africa.

The project will be co-implemented by three Africa-based CGIAR Centers: the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Africa Rice Center, and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas.

IITA is also the Executing Agency of the project.Another CGIAR Center – the International Food Policy Research Institute a specialized technical agency, will support the other three Centers.

The notice of grant approval was received by Nteranya Sanginga, Director General of IITA, on March 2. It was signed by Dougou Keita, Manager of the Agriculture and Agro-Industry Division 2 of the Bank.

The SARD-SC Project comes at an opportune time when food security and nutrition are high on the national agenda of the Bank’s Regional Member Countries (RMCs), as rising food prices push millions of people into extreme hunger and poverty.

The SARD-SC allows – for the first time ever in a single project – a continental coverage of the food security challenges in Africa.

Its overall goal is to enhance food and nutrition security and contribute to poverty reduction in the Bank’s low-income RMCs.

Its target beneficiaries are individual farmers and consumers, farmers’ groups including youth and women, policy makers, private sector operators, marketers/traders, transporters, small-scale agricultural machinery manufacturers, and institutions.

The Bank’s low-income RMCs include Benin Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, DR Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

The project is expected to contribute towards addressing the current shortfall in food supply in these countries and beyond by working across the full value chain of each crop and addressing both food costs and employment creation.

Through its value chain approach, SARD-SC will also contribute to crop-livestock integration based on the use of the commodities’ by-products.

The well-tested, IITA-espoused research-for-development model adopted in this project can deliver stellar results as most of the successful technologies, models, manpower, and knowledge to be mobilized in SARD-SC are already available from the implementing CGIAR Centers and national partners. SARD-SC will produce regional public goods that may be used not only in the target RMCs but also in other countries in Africa.

Ends

President cautions against NGOs bottom-up approach on food security.

Press release : State House : March 6, 2012

President Yoweri Museveni has called for the re-evaluation of Uganda’s colonial policies on agriculture saying colonial ideas where designed for their own interests but must be revisited to know what is good for the country and what can be done away with.

The President was referring to the partitioning of Uganda’s crops into cash and food crops with regions such as West Nile gazetted for tobacco growing while others were for cotton and coffee.

“Farmers must make proper calculations of their incomes from enterprises to assess their incomes. Colonial agriculture must be assessed to know whether it is still relevant or not. They made maize a cash crop so it was not emphasized but it is now a major cash as well as food crop. The colonial idea of tobacco growing should have been assessed. What are they getting from tobacco,” he said.

The President was today speaking at the Zonal Conference on Poverty Alleviation and Enterprise selection for the Lango region districts of Aleptong, Amolatar, Apac, Dokolo, Kole, Lira, Otuke and Oyam at Entebbe State House. The conference organized by State House for each region in Uganda will run for two weeks. It is being attended by technical staff including production officers, NAADS coordinators, and members of parliament, ministers and technical people from stakeholder ministries. The conference aims at sensitizing farmers about selecting the right enterprises that can improve food security but also provide incomes to the families. The enterprises selected must have national, regional and international demand.

The President emphasized that leaders must help the people to make informed choices about the enterprises they select especially in regions where the land holding is five acres of land or less. This he says, will enable them invest in projects that promote food security as well as incomes for the homesteads.

The President said Non Governmental organizations that preach only food security without emphasing incomes only encourage people to produce for the stomach and not for empowerment.

“They talk about food security, if the stomach is full but I have no money how are you helping me? Are there only food needs or also none food needs. Modern life is not about food only, there are also money needs for the family,” he said.

The President also criticized the NGOs approach of `bottom-up’ when dealing with situations such as land fragmentation.

“The NGO approach is bottom-up but how about the head? If you have a situation where the bottom is doing most of the talking, it becomes a very serious situation. This approach deteriorates into popularism. If you want to talk to drunkards you must be like them. Popularism can be very dangerous; you must guide people on land fragmentation,” he said.

The President warned that land is not elastic but the population is growing.

“Where will the cultivation be? Land is not for accommodation alone but for production. We must maintain the integrity of property,” he said.

The conference seeks to mobilize and sensitize the people about effective land use through enterprise selection and mix for poverty alleviation. Among other things, it seeks to know enterprise priorities per region that can give an equal or greater income to what a homestead spends, how much homesteads are spending on needs per annum, the average landholding per homestead and identify government intervention gaps.

Ends.

President Museveni declares war on insects that cause nodding syndrome

Press release: State House: 06^th March 2012  

President Yoweri Museveni has reiterated government’s commitment to eradicate the “nodding” disease affecting children in the north of the country.

The President today paid a visit to 25 patients suffering from the nodding disease who are under intensive care and treatment at Mulago Children’s hospital.

The disease is suspected to be caused by the same germs that cause river-blindness.

President Museveni, who consoled the patients and wished them quick recovery, explained that the government’s intervention will include killing all insects responsible for the transmission of the disease by massive spraying as well as treat all people at the same time.

“The government will kill insects by spraying and treat all people at once not treating this one and leave the other. It is better to treat everybody to finish all the germs”, he said.

The President also urged patients to complete the dosage prescribed by the doctors to avoid re-emergence of the disease.

“It is not like HIV/AIDS. This disease is curable. We have the drugs to treat river-blindness,” he noted.

President Museveni, who facilitated Kitgum Women MP, Ms. Beatrice Anywar, to transport the affected children to Mulago Hospital for further management, justified the move, explaining that this would enable doctors carry out further investigations on the disease. He added that this would also help doctors find other ways of feeding the affected children as their appetite is completely destroyed by the nodding disease leading to severe malnutrition and death.

According to Professor James Tumwine, who, together with the Minister of Health, Hon. Jane Ondoa, received the President at Mulago Hospital, the nodding disease is believed to be caused by the same germ that causes river blindness. He said the germs affect the electric flow in the brain and once it becomes abnormal, it leads to a type of epilepsy or nodding disease that destroys the appetite of a child leading to severe malnutrition.

ENDS