Vaccinations, medication, Healthy risks to consider while visiting Uganda

 by Ivan Wassaaka

Information about vaccinations, immunization and medications you need to consider as yo plan to travel to Uganda and Rwanda for your Holiday

What vaccinations do I need?

A yellow fever vaccine is essential – bring your certificate with you.

Hepatitis A and B, meningitis, polio, tetanus and typhoid vaccinations are also recommended.

A Rabies vaccination is recommended for anyone who expects to be in close contact with animals or in a remote area.

Be aware that some of these require a course of injections, and others take several days to take effect. So you should visit your doctor or travel clinic as soon as possible before you travel.

Should I bring any other medications?

Anti-malarial tablets are recommended throughout Uganda – visit your local travel clinic to determine which type is best for you. Note: Chloroquine does not protect against malaria in Uganda.

Bring all prescription medications with you – they may not be readily available in Uganda.

Be sure to purchase travel insurance before you begin your trip, including medical evacuation in case of an emergency.

What Other Healthy Risks Are There?

Even if you are taking anti-malarials, you should still wear an insect repellent, long-sleeved shirts, long trousers and closed shoes. This will also help protect you from other diseases carried by mosquitoes, and other insects such as tsetse flies.

All accommodation in high-risk areas will have mosquito nets  - be sure to use them.
Avoid swimming in Uganda’s lakes – they carry a high risk of bilharzias.

Tap water is not suitable for drinking, though bottled water is readily available throughout the country.

NGO Sues Uganda Government over National Museum Demolition

Representing many others, a Kampala based NGO called Pro-Biodiversity Conservationist in Uganda (PROBICOU) has sued the government of Uganda for its refusal to release details concerning the shopping mall project supposedly meant to be constructed at the current location of the Uganda’s only national museum. It intends to lease out the land to investors to develop a shopping mall at the site.

The case is in Magistrate’s Court Mengo and it is registered as No. 185 of 2012 and it is different from Ellady Muyambi HRCI which filed its case earlier seeking a permanent injunction against the controversial project.

PROBICOU argues that government’s refusal to release information is contrary to article 41 and 50 of the constitution besides breaching sections 2,5,6,37,41 &42 of the access to information Act among other laws. The NGO also accuses the minister of trade Amelia Kyambadde for failing to compel technocrats at her ministry to release information regarding the proposed construction of the East African Trade Center, its architectural plans and certified copies of the plot’s land title.

They are also demanding access to the project’s Environmental Impact Assessment report, cultural heritage impact assessment report, geological surveyors report, and bid documents showing the number of companies that bided for the project as required by the PPDA. The petition shows that the NGO has been asking for this information since March 2012 to no avail.

Through its lawyers of Pearl Advocates and Solicitors, the NGO claims it’s demanding to access that information in good faith and public interest. The NGO’s Executive Director Paul Twebaze is among those swearing affidavits supporting the petition.

The National museum is a major tourist attraction in Kampala, typically included on every Kampala City tour itinerary for visitors. The museum was founded in 1908 after George Wilson called for "all articles of interest" on Uganda to be procured. Also among the collections in the Uganda Museum are playable musical instruments, hunting equipment, weaponry, archaeology and entomology.

The Uganda museum is currently under the threat of demolition as the Uganda Government is planning to build in its place an "East African Trade Centre". Four civil society organizations vis - the Historic Resources Conservation Initiatives (HRCI), Cross Cultural Foundation of Uganda (CCFU), Historical Buildings Conservation Trust (HBCT) and Jenga Afrika have taken the government of the Republic of Uganda to court to stop the government's plans.

In April 2011 when the campaign had gathered momentum, Francesco Bandarin, the Assistant Director-General for Culture at UNESCO, wrote to Kahinda Otafiire, the then minister of Tourism, Trade and Industry at the time, urging the government to abandon the move and find alternative land elsewhere.

“As you are aware, the Uganda National Museum is the largest and oldest museum in the country. Its exhibitions on traditional culture, archeology, history, science and natural history are among the most important in East Africa… In light of the above considerations, we would appreciate it if  you could inform us of the official position of your government regarding the fate of the Uganda National Museum,” Bandarin wrote on April 15, 2011.

Similarly, last year, Merrick Posnansky, who was curator of the museum between 1958 and 1962, wrote in The Independent, a Ugandan weekly news magazine, that it would not be ideal to transfer the contents of the museum safely.
“I have seen museums restricted to floors of a multi-storey building. They do not work. A museum needs different rooms for different exhibitions, two floors would restrict some movement,” Posnansky wrote.

The museum was founded in 1908 and has exhibits and artifacts of traditional culture, archeology, history and science. It has various interesting sections riddled with artifacts that bring to life the different historical aspects of our society. For instance, in the Stone Age section, one is able to observe physical tools used by Stone Age people. These tools include stones, bones and wood used for cutting, scrapping and chipping, and how they evolved into the modern tools that Ugandans use today, or used in the recent past.

One is also able to see how we evolved from our ancestors, from the pre-historic period through the history of apes and how they evolved into humans. The story is told by the displayed pictures, as well as real tools and bones or skulls that make the history we learn in school seem more real.

Uganda’s multicultural and colourful past comes alive as one tours the History and Iron Age displays depicting the traditional ways of life in different kingdoms, tribes and communities of Uganda. Here one finds striking displays of traditional clothing (mostly bark cloth and animal skin), headdress, hairdressing, as well as hunting, the history of transportation, fishing, agriculture, war, religion, and how our ancestors spent their free time (traditional recreation).

Also of interest is the display that describes how justice was dispensed in Uganda many years ago. With no penal code, police force or criminal investigations department as they exist today, how did people in earlier days know/prove who had committed which crime and what punishment fitted him/her? One would be able to learn that the Madi and Lugbara used divine pots to assess the innocence of the accused.

However, despite this rich cultural heritage value, government believes that the museum has become a liability, having failed to generate any meaningful revenue. A trade centre in the same place, government feels, would perform much better. Yet government must also take part of the blame, having continually underfunded the museum. For instance, for the 2011/2012 financial year, it was allocated a mere Shs 50 million, money that certainly is not enough to meet its needs.

Over the years, the management of the museum has tried to come up with innovative ways to circumvent the funding crisis. It has, for instance, leased part of its land to the Uganda Wildlife Authority, which has established offices and to private developers like Ibamba restaurant. However, sources told us that the museum has no direct control over the resources generated from these ventures.

 

Thousands of Ugandas and foreign visitors visit the site every month thus making it a major source of foreign exchange for the country. The museum currently employs slightly over 100 staff directly.

what is going to happen, will government give in? Watch this space for government’s response to the petition.

Uganda Ebola Outbreak Under Control - World Health Organisation

 The World Health Organization has said that authorities are halting the spread of Ebola.

Joaquim Saweka, the WHO representative in Uganda, told reporters in Kampala that everyone known to have had contact with Ebola victims has been isolated.

Health officials have created an "Ebola contact list" with names of people who had even the slightest contact with those who contracted Ebola. The list now bears 176 names.

"The structure put in place is more than adequate," Saweka said. "We are isolating the suspected or confirmed cases."

Ebola was confirmed in Uganda on July 28, several days after a few people died in a remote corner of western Uganda. At least 16 Ugandans have died of the disease.

Saweka said that organizations such as Doctors Without Borders and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are helping Ugandan officials to control the spread of Ebola.

This is the fourth outbreak of Ebola in Uganda since 2000, when the disease killed 224 people and left hundreds more traumatized in northern Uganda.

Ebola is highly infectious and kills quickly. The disease was first reported in 1976 in Congo and is named for the river where it was recognized, according to the CDC.

Budget, Luxury Car hire Uganda, Kampala
3 Days Uganda Gorilla Trek 

6 Days Gorilla and Wildlife Safari Uganda

7 Days Uganda Wildlife and Gorilla Safari

Surviving in Kampala - How people live in Uganda's Capital city

The first time I tried to use that popular saying ‘Kampala sibizimbe’ (Kampala isn't just the towers), I got it wrong. I said Kampala sizimbe, much to the amusement of my mean relatives. 

Things are hard and you’ve got to be creative to survive. My version of ‘sizimbe’ also works, if you open your mind up a little but you know, whatever. 

I like people who hustle. Let me rephrase that for honesty. I like men who hustle. I’m pretty ambitious myself (although not as rabidly as say, two years ago) because I’ve already realised my childhood dream; which was to write in the same ‘paper area’ as Ernest Bazanye. 

If you’re my age (and as sharp as I am), your mind started to flower just about when he started writing, so you can understand how glorious and unattainable that goal seemed to me. Whatever hustling that had to be done for me to achieve it got done and now I’m relaxing a bit.

Give me a man with good hustle-sense and you can keep the dowry. Dowry exists mostly to show a girl’s parents that the family she is marrying into can take care of her in as grand a way as she’s accustomed to or even grander.

If he can chase deals and dream up businesses, he’s a good enough substitute. I’m supportive of every kind of hustle until it infringes on my own. If, for example, I were in a hurry to get to a meeting on the other side of town, I wouldn’t expect my boda man to behave the way my friend Roger did. 

I would react with a lot of annoyance in fact. Roger once flagged down a boda to take him from Greenland Towers to Kamwokya. He hadn’t even finished stating the amount he was willing to pay when the man started riding at a high speed.

It is only when they reached Wandegeya that he turned and asked,“Mpozzi where are you going?” When Roger said Kamwokya, he killed the engine and told him to get off. 

Eyo sigendayo. Asked why he’d allowed him to board in the first place, the man replied:

“They beat people at that Greenland stage! If you stop nga you don’t belong there? I stopped for you because banange, Kampala sibizimbe. I also need money!”

And it’s not only boda types that have taken hustling to insane levels. Even not so desperate people with steady allowances are capable of hitting you over the head with the silliest schemes. My cousin once tried to sell drinking water to members of the household.

He took the jerry cans off the dining table and held them hostage, smiling smugly at everybody who came from the kitchen with a cup. He demanded a sum, any sum the thirsty person was willing to pay. Later, he tried to pretend that he’d been trying to teach us life lessons, to make us really think about capitalism and how it has turned humanity’s most basic of needs into a thing to be exchanged for money, but we were on to him.

Tiny children and their mothers flooded Kampala’s streets a few years ago. No longer contented with just chasing after you in the hope of making a few hundred shillings, they threaten. Some say they’ll spit, and others even wave handfuls of feces in your direction, to inspire your generosity. 

This is terrible, but also impressive. They’ve turned begging into an art, a real hustle.

Adopted from the New Vision