The Challenges and Triumphs Over the Years at The MOD Public Health Foundation, Uganda: Part III Interview with Samuel Waliggo, MPH, Founder and Executive Director of the MOD Public Health Foundation Uganda
Part III Interview with Samuel Waliggo, MPH, Founder and Executive Director of the MOD Public Health Foundation Uganda.
Interviewer:
As
we wind down, you brought up matters of most importance and in the Public and Global
Health realm we continue to realize them as the three of the topmost of the
other intersectional forces affecting life outcomes. Climate change, working in
silos, and our insistence on prescribing single-issue interventions.
Samuel
Waliggo:
Right!
How I wish that budgets would allow us to tackle, for instance, malaria while at
the same time, we engage in climate-change countermeasures and at the same time
empowering communities to build pandemic or crisis-resilient systems and
structures. A climate crisis is a health crisis, yet the opportunity to
influence and effect climate-change countermeasures has not been fully realized
or popularised. An organisation trying to mobilize people to plant say, two
million (2,000,000) million trees may be perceived by many as misusing funds.
Another organisation providing feeds to households where vulnerability due to
malnutrition is high may be said to be promoting dependence. Governments and funders providing money
should be positioned for multi-issue funding. The needs are changing following
the multi-triggers of vulnerability and so are the metrics to be used to
measure outcomes.
We
are called upon now to do something as healthcare, development workers,
economists, lawyers, bankers, educationists, the faith leaders, political
leaders, traditionalists, engineers, parents, children, adolescents, adults,
seniors, family heads, and informal and formal sector workers as a whole. We have a
crucial role to play, both in mitigating against pandemics, pollution, crises, and climate change globally, and advocating for collective action to protect the
populations, earth, waters, air, and land. All of us must be in the spaces
where formal corrective or reparative negotiations take place. All of us must
be ready to pick up the litter or trash one individual, one household, one
community, one government, and one globe at a time.
Our
work serves the communities or the larger networks and we hope this is our voice
and stand. Health promotion work and health-seeking practices are fundamental
and central features that underly all forms of life outcomes. Let us use activism,
engage present and future generations, and influence programming, planning, and policy to ensure better life outcomes for individuals and communities.
When we fail to do this, life will remain a challenge. When we do this, life
will be bearing in a triumphal direction. We cannot stop today; the journey is
ongoing. So, I can confidently say that triumph is possible when we keep
preventing diseases, prolonging life, and promoting health. This translates into
social-economic returns and a reversal of inequalities and inequities.
End of Interview.
____________________
Contact us.
Samuel Waliggo,
MPH
MOD Public
Health Foundation, Uganda
P.O BOX 211, Plot
79, Bukoba Road,
Near Gaz, Masaka
City,
Mobile: +256 772675563
Office: +256 485660637
E-mail:
samuel.waliggo@mod.or.ug
samuel.waliggo@gmail.com
This is "Public Health" that centers people in planning, programming and policy-making. I like the statement "governments and funders providing money should be positioned for multi-issue funding. The needs are changing following the multi-triggers of vulnerability and so are the metrics to be used to measure outcomes."
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