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

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