Mountains of the Moon University

Introduction

In many African Universities training in Public Health is mainly at postgraduate level. This renders it difficult to produce enough Public Health professionals for public health services. Yet it is a very well known fact that no country can perform better than its educational system.

 

The interplay between education, health, economy and the life expectancy of a nation is very crucial. In Uganda institutions of higher learning especially those in science field are not many. There is also high disease burden attributed to the high prevalence of preventable diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and malnutrition. Yet there is a National Health Policy which emphasizes the importance of health promotion and disease prevention. But there are an inadequate number of professionals available with relevant public Health knowledge and skills to provide public health leadership in the region. Consequently, life expectancy is 48 years, maternal mortality is 435 per 100,000 and infant mortality rate is 76 per 1000 live births (UDHS 2006). All this is partly due to high patient to health professionals’ ratio.

In addition to the above, most of the health centres have Health Inspectors (diploma holders) but few of them are trained at university level. Important tasks such as provision of safe water supply, sanitation, meat inspection, health and housing are attended to by low cadre staff. This situation in many regions of Uganda is not very different in most Tropical African countries. Mountains- of- the- Moon University has thus come in to contribute to the bridging of this gap by offering a Bachelor of Science in Public Health, in East Africa. 

The Department of Health Sciences is focused on producing outstanding Public Health Professionals who meet National and international standards for modern job market.