Uganda National Council for Higher Education

Uganda experienced 2 COVID-19 waves that challenged health professional education. All health professions training institutions (HPTIs) in Uganda closed in March 2020. Cognizant of the threat to quality education and the frontline workforce, the National Council for Higher Education (NCHE) and Seed Global Health partnered to examine the risks and benefits of HPTI reopening through the Safe Schools Initiative (SSI). This article described the processes to unify stakeholders in health professions education and the outcomes from these discussions during the COVID-19 pandemic in Uganda.During the first COVID-19 wave, the SSI conducted consultative meetings with key stakeholders. The SSI developed guidelines around student welfare and issued standard operating procedures (SOPs) for HPTI reopening. The NCHE recommended in-person learning for final-year students and online learning for junior years, resulting in HPTIs being the first academic institutions to reopen in the country. During the second COVID-19 wave, schools closed again. The SSI utilized recently published literature and quantitative data to inform decision making in addition to expert consensus. The NCHE recommended immediate phased reopening for students in clinical years, blended learning for nonclinical years, and prioritizing health professions education in future lockdowns. Consequently, HPTIs reopened within a month of closure. The SSI demonstrated that national advocacy for health professions education can be effective when engaging stakeholders to build consensus around difficult decisions.Key lessons learned from the SSI include the following: (1) collaborating across sectors in health professions education can amplify change, (2) occupational health guidelines must include health professions students, (3) investing in online education and simulation has value in outbreak-prone areas, and (4) systemic inequities in health professions education will require persistence and advocacy to correct. Future pandemic preparedness must prioritize HPTIs to ensure quality education and continuity of a frontline workforce.

ABSTRACTVaccine failures after Newcastle disease vaccination with the current commercial vaccines have been reported and are associated with many factors, including genotypic and antigenic differences between vaccine and outbreak strains, although all APMV-1 members belong to one serotype. We assessed the immunoprotection ability of four thermostable, low-virulent Newcastle disease-virus isolates from Ugandan waterfowl against challenge with a virulent strain (MDT = 36.8 h, ICPI = 1.78) isolated from morbid chicken. Six-week-old commercial Leghorn layers, challenged at 21 days post immunization were used. Four isolates designated: NDV-133/UG/MU/2011, NDV-177/UG/MU/2011, NDV-178/UG/MU/2011 and NDV-173/UG/MU/2011 induced mean haemagglutinin inhibition antibody titres of log2 9.3, 8.2, 6.3 and 2.0, respectively, at 21 days post immunization. The antibody titres correlated with the protection rates (R² = 0.86, p < 0.007) of 60%, 50%, 20% and 0% of birds, respectively, against challenge at 14 days post challenge. Further evaluation of these and more low-virulent isolates might provide an alternative to the current commercial vaccine failures.

The quantitative growth in Ugandan higher education subsector has created many challenges including a drop in quality in education delivery. Today, there are 34 universities in Uganda (up from 26 in 2006) with over 185,000 students (up from 137,190), representing an overall growth rate of more than 15% in the last 5 years. Given this rapid expansion of higher education, some form of regulation is necessary to assure quality. Ugandan government established the National Council for Higher Education (NCHE) as a regulatory agency to set standards and regulations to ensure that all public and private tertiary education institutions in Uganda create, sustain and improve the relevance and quality of higher education for all qualified Ugandans and to meet the local, national and global higher education challenges of the 21st century. In addition to sustaining and improving the relevance and quality of higher education, these religious based universities have a special mission of evangelism and discipleship and view all admissions and appointments as opportunities for ministry and service. This however, may not go well with the peer assessors and the Accrediting Agencies. Currently there are more than six recognised faith based universities in Uganda. Out of the seven fully accredited universities in Uganda, five are faith based and only two are secular. There are different views about the philosophies of these faith-based universities. Some people seem to suggest that they pay more attention to evangelism and discipleship than in provision of higher education. While others view this type of institutions as a very good model to provide good morals and education that can transform the society in a positive way. At the same time, the regulatory framework in the country must provide for an all- inclusive environment for all to participate in higher education which may pose a big challenge to these faith based institutions. This article therefore, discusses the accreditation process in Uganda and challenges of private religious based Universities in Uganda in regards to accreditation.