Experts plan first Medical Information Expo

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Health workers are set to conduct a medical expo aiming at sharing knowledge between experts and health consumers. This is due to the raising scarcity of medical or health misinformation.

Speaking to URN in an interview on Tuesday, Dr. Daniel Tumwine, a Pediatrician who is leading the Medical Expo team said while Uganda has lately been having medical camps focusing on various issues and sometimes patients get to access free health services, in the expo due in September, they have lined up over fifty specialists in different fields of medicine to provide information relating to key health concerns as presented by the public.

Dr. Tumwine says due to low awareness; many Ugandans have been ignorantly enticed to opt for often expensive procedures which in some cases do not directly yield positive results as far as saving or improving life is concerned.

He for instance cited bone marrow transplants warning that the recovery rate after the procedure is just 5%, yet people are recently increasingly seeking it abroad when other treatment options have not been exhausted or when the risks involved are not well explained.

This expo which runs from September 7th to the 9th at UMA show grounds in Lugogo according to Laila Noor who is part of the Expo team is open to all. He says that it has been organized with the belief that access to health information is a human right even as only a small percentage of Ugandans have access to accurate relevant and timely medical information.

She cites studies that indicate that eight in ten caregivers do not know the key symptoms of childhood pneumonia and yet this is one of the biggest causes of death among children below the age of five.

Her point is further expounded by Tumwine who runs the Children’s Clinic at Naalya and Kisaasi in Kampala who reveals that mothers who turn up to his clinic are largely unaware that fast breathing is one of the warning signs that a child has pneumonia.

Now, doctors say since this expo is coming in at the time when the Ministry of Health is pushing for disease prevention as they battle the problem of self-medication, the National Drug Authority (NDA) will be able to offer information on not just the dangers of over the counter drug seeking but also where and how they report adverse drug reaction events to seek proper interventions.

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URN