Wilber Sabiiti @SabiitiwWilber

@rkalyes1 Only geniuses could crack this. I am not one of them. I am old school, can only read plain text.

@cobbo3 True. I am searching for his speeches just to hear his voice but hardly can get any. Yet, I knew he was, I felt his presence, his influence and his care. I felt I saw him everyday yet I didn’t. Indeed he occupied the hearts of millions without forcing himself in.

@jwgale The chronology of the journey is quite confusing. Why would he go through Rwanda, then Uganda and then Congo? There is no Ebola in Rwanda meaning he started in Eastern DRC but then why go to Rwanda, Uganda and then back to DRC?

Where were you when terrorists attacked the Twin Towers September 11, 25 years ago? I was thousands of miles away from New York. A young teacher at a charity owned Academy in Luwero district 40-50km north of Kampala city in Uganda. The Charity Director was an American missionary from California. I/We felt the shock, fear and pain of what had happened. All of us, staff and children were summoned to the chapel where the news was broken. We were gripped by fear but we were reminded the strongest weapon we had was prayer. We prayed and committed New York, USA and the whole world to the hands of God. May God give us grace and wisdom to learn from what happened and work hard to make this world a better one to live in.

Happy to be in Antwerp to talk Science after 16 years! We are spending 2 productive days at the Institute of Tropical Medicine to discuss ways to standardise RNA-based measures of bacterial viability. Which RNA species accurately reflect live bacteria and how can they be used to monitor drug activity and treatment response? Bacteria such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis (cause of tuberculosis), Mycobacterium ulcerans (cause of Buruli ulcer) and Mycobacterium leprae (cause of leprosy) are difficult to grow in the lab and so molecular approaches of detection are crucial. Happy to meet the best brains in the field from Australia, Belgium, Gambia, Ghana, Spain, Switzerland, Uganda, USA and UK. @Infection_StAnd @StAndMedicine @univofstandrews @IMI_ERA4TB @UNITE4TB @DNDi @Lung_Institute @TheUnion_TBLH @WHO

@SolomonSerwanjj @UgandaPrisons Your village is lucky to have a famous spokesperson. At the end of the term we will do a comparative audit between your village and the one without a famous spokesperson and measure the impact on economic development.

@drstellanyanzi Excellent poem that captures the real moment of pain and grief.

Explore our new Article Collection dedicated to the game-changing role of personalised antimicrobial strategies in managing infectious disease. It is part of the Game Changer Series, highlighting breakthrough therapies, drugs, or technologies that have significantly altered the standard of care. Papers in the Game Changer Series have been widely promoted across Taylor and Francis, increasing the discoverability of your research. invt.io/1txbght1w75 @Lung_Institute @Infection_StAnd @KCRITanzania @MinofHealthUG @DesmondOmaneAc1 @ChestDrDevesh @derekjsloan @NHSfife @NHS @WHO @AWG_News @AMResistance @CDC_AR @LancetGH @StanfordASP @ARICJournal @Duke_ASET @AfricaCDC

Don't think Mpox has gone away! Much as the focus is on controlling the current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the mpox epidemic is still around. Mpox continues to spread across East and Central Africa with Guinea Bissau reporting their first case in the past two weeks. Rapid diagnosis remains difficult where centralised PCR testing requires complex sample transport and specialist laboratories. In prospective study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases - sciencedirect.com/science/articl…, we evaluated the accuracy of the Dragonfly mpox LAMP diagnostic as a point-of-care molecular test. 300 people with mpox-like clinical signs were tested using the Dragonfly point-of-care molecular platform. Of these, 196 were confirmed positive by qPCR as reference test. Dragonfly achieved: 98.7% overall agreement with qPCR  98.5% sensitivity and 96.2% specificity for MPXV  Results were available in under 60 minutes. Front-line users reported high acceptability, highlighting the potential to diagnose, counsel and manage patients within a single visit. The next priorities are integration with existing diagnostic pathways, reliable training and supply chains, cost-effectiveness, and evaluation across different clades and populations. Rapid diagnostics must reach the places where outbreaks are happening. Our findings show that accurate molecular testing closer to patients is possible. It is crucial that investment in mpox countermeasures is not forgotten as we follow headlines of new attention grabbing outbreaks. @ICER_Global @AfricaCDC @WHO @Lung_Institute @brucekirenga @Hskyobe @winterzie @Patrickdemarie @MinofHealthUG @EDCTP3 #Mpox #Uganda #GlobalHealth #Diagnostics #OutbreakResponse #PointOfCareTesting #HealthInnovation

@mkainerugaba I think a regulated time of opening and closing was a good idea by @BalaamBarugahar You cannot leave pubs to regulate themselves.

@GovUganda Very sad to lose such a young soul, the King that most of us saw as a great inspiration to the young generation of Ugandans and beyond.

Uganda declared Ebola free

@USEmbassyUganda Isn’t it ironic that American citizens travelling from Uganda are Ebola free and safe to enter US while Ugandan citizens travelling from the same country aren’t?

The irony of fighting the Bundibugyo ebolavirus outbreak amidst extreme community resistance “Ebola responders were chased with machetes while trying to bury a victim in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo,” writes Bloomberg journalist Jason Gale. The irony is stark: health workers risking their lives to contain Ebola are being attacked, obstructed and driven from the communities that need them most. Just over 100 days into the outbreak, more than 5,500 have been infected and 2,642 had died. And this may be an underestimate because a substantial number of cases are not reporting for testing and treatment. Safe burials, decontamination, ambulance transfers and case investigations are disrupted by some violent groups while mistrust and refusals of testing or isolation have increased. Meanwhile, some frontline workers remained unpaid for months, which is unfortunate. Fighting an Ebola disease outbreak is like fighting a war, and you cannot afford to forget the frontline worker even for an hour. Delays in remunerating the frontline responders is recipe for losing the fight against this outbreak. This is more than a viral outbreak. It is a crisis intensified by armed conflict, displacement, poverty, fragile institutions and declining community trust. More than 60% of Ebola deaths occurred in communities, beyond the reach of treatment centres. The arrival of the Ervebo vaccine offers hope, although it is not approved specifically against the Bundibugyo ebolavirus strain and its protective value must be evaluated. Vaccines and treatment centres are vital—but they cannot succeed without community engagement, early detection, safe isolation, infection control, culturally respectful burials, and properly protected and paid responders. Success in outbreak response ultimately depends on trust. Without it, even the best medical tools may never reach the people they are designed to protect. @jwgale @DrTedros @julienmh @ICER_Global @winterzie @anujmehtray @brucekirenga @MWayengera @Hskyobe @DailyMonitor @BBCWorld @BBCAfrica @BBCBreaking @PlacideMbala @Patrickdemarie @DianaAtwine @CHRISBARYOMUNS1 @rail_dlm @BarikiMtafya3 @RBCRwanda #Ebola #PublicHealth #GlobalHealth #CommunityEngagement #DRC #HealthSecurity

What is Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI)? DEI is not about hiring unqualified people. Yet frequently used phrases like “DEI hire” have a connotation that someone, often from a Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic (BAME) background, was chosen to meet a DEI quota rather than on merit. This has created a double-edged sword: 1) employers may hesitate to hire or promote BAME candidates for fear of appearing to favour DEI; 2) successful candidates are dubbed DEI hire with their qualifications and achievements unfairly questioned. To me, DEI means removing barriers, accommodating differences and giving qualified people an equal opportunity regardless of race, belief, gender, disability or socioeconomic background. It is NOT about recruiting someone with no qualifications simply to satisfy some imaginary DEI quota. It is about ensuring that capable people from underrepresented groups have a fair chance to participate. DEI is not the preserve of Global North. Many countries in the Global South have practiced it to address different gaps in their communities. For instance, in Uganda where I was born and raised, affirmative action was introduced in 1991 by awarding an additional 1.5 points for girls applying to public universities. The aim was to increase women participation in higher education whilst addressing a longstanding educational gender gap and increase the number of female graduates. It is important to note that these girls were academically qualified. This is demonstrated in the first-class degrees they earned over the years across the humanities and Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). During my time at Makerere University, the Faculty of Engineering produced many of the university’s first-class degree graduates. Females were among them and often won prizes for the highest cumulative grade point average (CGPA). To get a first class degree one needs to have scored a CGPA of 4.4 - 5.0 (80-100%) across all study semesters. Some of the girls scored 4.7 and above. Their success revealed how much talent Uganda had previously lost by leaving girls behind. The historical context matters. For generations, cultural practices made parents far less likely to send girls to school. Among girls born around my mother’s generation, the 1950s and earlier, roughly 95% or more had virtually no chance of being allowed to attend school. Women and girls were also denied inheritance rights. Uganda therefore made a bold decision to confront the deep gender gap, both in education and property ownership. Affirmative action and subsequent inheritance laws levelled the ground. The laws were not about lowering standards, but creating a fairer starting point as well equality for girls and boys, women and men, wives and husbands. In short, DEI benefits society by ensuring that a diversity of talent, skills, knowledge and cultures can contribute to the common good. It is about people complementing and learning from one another, not dominating or excluding one another. @UN @UNglobaledu @UNAIDS @plutusglobal @free_equal @globalcompact @GlobalGoalsUN