Challenges of hygiene promotion in emergency situations in Uganda

Uganda has experienced a lot of emergencies caused by; civil conflict in the North, flooding in the North-East and disease outbreaks (cholera hepatitis E, yellow fever and Ebola), resulting into emergency hygiene promotional activities. Many agencies have been actively involved in hygiene promotion activities and strategic frameworks have been formulated to guide the whole process as an intervention mechanism. In-spite of all these, hygiene and sanitation related diseases like Hepatitis E and cholera have continued to break out among the affected communities indicating gaps in the hygiene promotion campaign. The paper analyzes the problems/challenges experienced during hygiene promotion campaigns and make recommendations for improvement in areas of: co-ordination, funding mechanism, monitoring and evaluation, community participation, political support, message design/targeting, approaches, tools/materials, gender considerations, relationship with communities, technical issues, resource availability, motivation factors, available skills and cultural aspects/attitudes and policies/leadership/political ownership.