UgandAshis 36 Half Moon Monkey Mountain University

UgandAshis 36 Half Moon Monkey Mountain University

July 17, 2009

Fort Portal, Uganda

Yesterday was a good day. After missing out on all meetings of the public health team organizing the bachelors of Public Health course for the last month and a half I finally got hold of the team. The bachelor’s course is aimed at high school leavers and medical staff (nurses, midwives and community health workers). Because of that the course is taught in the evening and in the weekends. Also we are setting up a long distance component.

The university is a brand new one about 4 years now and it currently has 600 students enrolled. The public health course had about 25 students last year and there should be an increase this year to about 40 students this year. Students come from the Fort Portal region mainly and there are also Rwandese, Tanzanians, Sudanese and Ugandans enrolled from all over the country.

The course stands out for several reasons. One of which is that instead of the normal Masters course this is a three Bachelors course and the approach is a non doctor dominated one. The philosophy of the school is that Public Health can be practiced by all trained people and not just doctors. In the work and in our study we are trained from a curative perspective, hospital and technology heavy.

At the meeting we were distributing the courses. For the first semester I will be teaching Culture and Health to the second year students and Communicable Disease Control II to the third year students. The second semester I will be teaching Communicable Disease Control I to the first year students and Disaster Management to the third year students. For these courses I have 4 weeks to prepare. I shall be online a lot and sniffling through the library.

Next week I shall check out the library. From what I hear from my fellow teachers there are two main problems: First a lack of human resources and secondly a lack of resources. There is a lot to do and the team that is on the ground has done a lot of good. The first batch came out last year and in September the second batch will qualify. Plans are in progress to have a Masters course and a long distance course.

For this yea r the faculty will be in Fort Portal and next year the plan is to move to the new university complex. It is near a lake with a view of the Mountains of the Moon. It is stunningly beautiful. It has been a good day. A little dance was done. For my colleagues I have nothing but deep respect. Setting up a faculty with a core group of 6 in a city with 46.000 people is pretty awesome. I shall be writing more about it soon. We kick of August 15th. I cannot wait to get started. For those of you with power point presentations feel free to share.

Namaskar,

Ashis