After: Manafwa District Production Office Block after renovation in February 2023

The people of Manafwa District can now expect to keep healthier animals, receive timely assistance in the event of a disease outbreak, protect their crops and enhance their livelihoods, following the renovation of the district’s production office building. With support from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), through its Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases (ECTAD), Manafwa District now boasts of fully renovated infrastructure to facilitate animal and plant health service delivery. The renovated district production office was in response to an in-depth review of One Health implementation activities in the district and a recommendation to fast-track One Health activities at sub-national level. The recommendation was made by a joint mission comprising officials from FAO, the Ministry of Water and Environment, the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries, the Ministry of Health, Uganda Wildlife Authority, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Manafwa District Local Government. The mission found that the district had below-par human and infrastructural capacity to handle disease outbreaks, many of which now occur at the human-animal-environment nexus and require a holistic response (One Health). The joint One Health mission successfully mobilized UGX 90 000 000 (USD 24 423) from the Agricultural Extension Grant of the Government of Uganda, for the revamp of the Manafwa District production office and veterinary laboratory.

“The new facility will provide a mini laboratory for timely diagnosis of animal health challenges and boost our efforts in influencing the minds of district staff about the importance of laboratory diagnostics to effectively address One Health challenges such as disease outbreaks”, said Dr Boniface Obbo, the Manafwa District Production Officer (DPO).

Carved out of Mbale District in 2005, Manafwa District is bordered by Bududa District to the north, Kenya to the east and south, Tororo District to the southwest and Mbale District to the west. Namisindwa is another district in proximity. According to Dr Obbo, the refurbished structure will provide more space for operations and storage of vaccines and other paraphernalia necessary for One Health activities.

“With the improved facility, the neighboring Bududa and Namisindwa districts will have better access to animal health diagnostics, cold chain support and a nearer location to send samples for testing”, he said. He noted that due to limited space in Manafwa and the poor facilities in the sub-region, the districts had resorted to storing vaccines in public health centers.

“FAO is committed to working with the Government of Uganda to ensure that the One Health approach is effectively used to anticipate, detect and respond to public health challenges, which affect food, feed, incomes and lives”, said Antonio Querido, FAO Representative in Uganda. “FAO is grateful to funding from USAID, through which over USD 800 000 – 1 000 000 is invested annually in Uganda to support capacity building and human resource development”, he added. Querido encouraged the various stakeholders to work together and promote the synergy and cohesion necessary to eliminate loopholes affecting effective animal and human disease prevention and control programmes.

Better response to outbreaks in sight

By the end of the year 2022, Manafwa district had carried out mobile laboratory surveillance of trypanosomiasis and “farmers were very receptive”. The surveillance found that one of the sub-counties had 11 percent prevalence of the disease, an indicator of the likelihood of outbreak in the future. A disease transmitted by tsetse fly, bovine trypanosomiasis is a major constraint to cattle health and productivity throughout sub-Saharan Africa, including in Manafwa District. Other menacing diseases are rabies, anthrax, brucellosis and lumpy skin disease in livestock.

“Recently, we reported a suspected anthrax outbreak but we had to send samples to the National Animal Disease Diagnostics and Epidemiology Centre (NADDEC) in Entebbe”, he said. “Once commissioned, we are going to see a big change in diagnostics and better perceptions of the locals with this improvement to our capacity”, said Obbo.

Thanks for the joint One Health mission, Manafwa District is benefiting from One Health partnerships and engagements, which facilitated an effective response to an Anthrax outbreak in April 2022. Although the district lost 11 head of cattle (about UGX 25 million), Manafwa District would have lost over 1 500 head of cattle (UGX 3 billion) if preparedness efforts, risk communication and sensitization had not been done.

However, the mostly mountainous district, whose people keep both local and exotic livestock breeds, still grapples with limited human capacity to manage laboratory diagnostics, limited cold chain capacity for vaccines storage, power fluctuations which disrupt cold chain and poor storage facilities.

Uganda adopted the One Health approach as early as 1980 through the establishment of the Veterinary Public Health Division in the Ministry of Health. In 1992, the country established the Trypanosomiasis Control Council (COCTU), heralding the need for multidisciplinary and multi-stakeholder collaboration in managing public health challenges. One Health is an integrated, unifying approach that aims to sustainably balance and optimize the health of people, animals, and ecosystems. It recognizes the health of humans, domestic and wild animals, plants, and the wider environment (including ecosystems) are closely linked and inter-dependent.

The occurrence of emerging, reemerging and endemic zoonotic diseases and Uganda’s geographical location in the proximity of disease hot spots such as the Congo Basin, justify the country’s adoption of One Health. The National One Health Platform (NOHP), established in 2016, is working towards decentralizing One Health approaches from the national to sub-national (district) level in order to promote proximity-based coordination, collaboration, communication, and capacity.

FAO has been at the fore of increasing capacity of veterinary and public health professionals to adopt One Health, through skills-based programmes such as the In-service Applied Veterinary Training (ISAVET).