Skip to Main Content
Yale Institute for Global Health
Yale Home

INFORMATION FOR

Kampala, Uganda

Site Institution: Makerere College of Health Sciences
U.S. Institution: Yale University
Research Areas: Lung Health, Non-Communicable Chronic Diseases, Vector-Borne Diseases

Site Description:
The Makerere University College of Health Sciences (MaKCHS) is one of the leading medical universities in Sub-Saharan Africa. Its mission is to improve the health of people of Uganda through innovative teaching and research and provision of services responsive to societal needs.

Uganda TB Implementation Research Consortium
Walimu is a Uganda-based non-governmental institution that has a memorandum of understanding with Makerere University and hosts the Uganda TB Implementation Research Consortium (U-TIRC). U-TIRC is an academic-public health partnership involving the Uganda Ministry of Health, Makerere, and several overseas universities including Yale, Johns Hopkins, New York University, and several campuses of the University of California. Walimu oversees and operates a large portfolio of research and implementation projects funded by the US NIH and other governments, foundations, public health, and development agencies who sponsor research and implementation activities. Walimu also sponsors robust local training and capacity building initiatives through its own programs and by hosting individual fellowships. Scientifically, U-TIRC focuses on improving tuberculosis prevention, diagnostic evaluation, case finding, and linkage to care by undertaking high quality clinical, epidemiological and implementation science research. U-TIRC is particularly interested in the effects of comorbidities including HIV and chronic diseases, and in addressing the TB-HIV-NCD syndemic. Current GHES mentors include Dr. Achilles Katamba and Dr. J. Lucian (Luke) Davis.

Uganda Initiative for Integrated Management of Non-Communicable Diseases (UINCD)
UINCD is a Uganda-based research-to-policy consortium between faculty at Makerere University College of Health Sciences (Uganda) and Yale School of Medicine (US), and leadership at Mulago National Referral Hospital (Uganda) and the Uganda Ministry of Health. The mission of UINCD is "to build capacity in the realms of prevention, care, training, and research to enable the provision of effective and integrated care along the NCD management spectrum." While physically based in the capital city, Kampala, UINCD’s reach includes the entire country of Uganda. The breadth of UINCD’s work includes access to essential medicines; self-care for NCDs including heart failure, diabetes, hypertension, and mental illness; mobile health, and HIV-hypertension integration.

Current or recent projects:
  • Co-lead, along with Ministry of Health, of the Uganda NCD and Injuries of Poverty National Commission.
  • Implementation of PEN-Plus, a WHO-adopted integrated care strategy to increase the quality of services for severe chronic conditions at referral centers.
  • Using mobile health to improve self-care among patients with heart failure
  • Integrated management of HIV and hypertension
  • Updating the Uganda Essential Medicine and Health Supplies List for cardiovascular disease and other common chronic conditions.

Other features of this site include:
  • Infection Diseases Institute (IDI) is a Ugandan not-for-profit organization whose mission is to strengthen health systems in Africa, with a strong emphasis on infectious diseases, through research and capacity development. Established within Makerere University, the Institute provides care and treatment services to over 100,000 people living with HIV in urban and rural settings in Uganda. IDI is also a national referral centre for complicated cases of HIV. IDI leads a weekly research forum that serves as a regular venue for scientific exchange on HIV-TB research questions, among other topics.
  • The Makerere Lung Institute (MLI) is a research institute that was established in 2015 by Dr. Bruce Kirenga to respond to the epidemic of lung diseases in Uganda and other similar resource-limited settings. With the support of MaKCHS, the Makerere Lung Institute seeks to conduct lung health research that integrates diseases prevention, clinical care & training. MLI hosts a monthly Day of Lung Science, which provides a forum for presentation of and feedback on scientific research by local investigators active in clinical and implementation research in TB in Uganda.
  • The Integrated Biorepository of H3Africa Uganda (IBRH3AU) is a biorepository located at MaKCHS with state of the art facilities with the capacity to store over 400,000 samples. Its mission is to provide researchers with relevant genomic analyses in order to test new diagnostics, personalize treatment options and develop new treatment methods. The Director is Dr. Moses Joloba, Dean of the School of Biomedical Sciences at Makerere University, and an expert in translational research in TB. Services offered include processing of peripheral blood mononuclear cells, storage of serum, plasma, and whole blood, as well as culture isolates in an affiliated BSL3 laboratory.
  • The Mycobacteriology Laboratory is a state of the art facility that is the only laboratory at Makerere University accredited to handle highly infectious agents. Equipment available in the BSL-3 laboratory includes a high containment area, a MGIT 960 automated culture machine; two level two bio-safety cabinets, CO2 incubators; inverted microscopes; refrigeration facilities; and an automated back-up generator system.
  • IDI Core/CAP Certified Laboratory Established in 1989 and internationally accredited by the College of American Pathologists (CAP) since 2003, the Makerere University-Johns Hopkins University (IDI) Core Laboratory remains a regional and continental leader in the provision of excellent medical laboratory services. The Core Laboratory serves at least 40 research studies at any one time, along with routine clinical diagnostic testing, drawing up an annual testing volume capacity of over 300,000 tests.

Mentors