Uganda Attends Russian Healthcare Week 2024 in Moscow

Uganda is seeking to deepen its bilateral collaboration with the Russian Federation to strengthen its healthcare system through key priority areas, including handling infectious diseases, strengthening emergency medical services, electronic medical records, and training healthcare specialists.

While attending a high-level meeting in Moscow at the sidelines of Russian Healthcare Week 2024, Dr. Joseph Okware, Director of Governance and Regulation, who is representing the Minister of Health, Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng, appreciated the government of the Russian Federation for its continued partnership and collaboration with Uganda.

“Uganda would like to appreciate the government of the Russian Federation for the generous support of a donated mobile laboratory truck which arrived in the country and is currently being used to respond to disease outbreaks,” Dr. Okware noted during the high-level meeting, which was chaired by the Health Minister of the Russian Federation, Prof. Mikhail Murashko.

At the meeting, Prof. Murashko requested attending countries to list the areas of interest where they would like to collaborate with the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation after delivering his address, which highlighted the structure of the Russian healthcare system.

Building on the earlier Africa-Russian International Scientific Conference on Combating Infectious Diseases hosted by Uganda in Kampala in April this year, Dr. Okware listed Uganda’s collaboration areas of interest, including handling infectious diseases, strengthening emergency medical services, electronic medical records, and training healthcare specialists.

“We need to further the collaboration on what we agreed upon, and we have continued to send relevant experts from Uganda to have discussions on the technical areas we agreed upon in that conference. But on our radar, we also have the need to learn from Russia on how you have managed to build a good system for handling emergencies like accidents,” Dr. Okware told the meeting.

He further noted that Uganda is currently building an emergency medical services system, though it is still in its infancy stage.

“Thirdly, the issue of electronic medical records is an area we want to improve because at the moment we are still using paper-based records, and we are beginning to change from paper-based to electronic records. I believe Russia is very advanced on this front,” Dr. Okware observed.

Dr. Okware noted that many people leave Uganda to go overseas to access highly specialized care, which is very costly.

Uganda has set up specialized hospitals like UCI, UHI, and MSWNH to address such circumstances, and this is also an area where collaboration between the two countries can be paramount in developing local expertise.

Prof. Murashko acknowledged the already existing collaboration between Uganda and the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation in managing epidemic diseases like Ebola, adding that the Russian Federation was the first to manufacture Ebola vaccines.

Dr. Okware is accompanied by Dr. Juliet Birungi, a consultant gynecologist-oncologist working at the Mulago Specialized Women and Neonatal Hospital, a facility whose main objective is to offer highly specialized services like cancer care and treatment for women and children, an area where the Russian Federation has great wealth of knowledge, advancement, and expertise.

The 5-day Russian Healthcare Week 2024 is being held at the ExpoCentre in Moscow and has attracted key international health sector players to showcase various advancements in healthcare.