Uganda: Ebola in Uganda

“No time for that” was the fixed chorus heard by gender and girls’s well being consultants working within the 2014/16 Ebola response. This was an emergency and the primary factor was to cope with the disaster.

It was the Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone outbreak of Ebola that signalled what was to come back for girls all over the world within the COVID-19 outbreak. Quarantines noticed a rise in home and intimate accomplice violence. Women had been banned from school after they returned pregnant. Worry of well being centres and hospitals and closures led to will increase in different well being points. More ladies died from maternal mortality than from Ebola.

In early 2020 I labored with ladies all over the world to lift the flag of the potential gendered impact of COVID-19. However few individuals wished to pay attention. No time for that. As with Ebola, it’s typically solely when the hurt is finished that folks engaged on the response realise two essential issues. First, well being emergencies do speedy and long run hurt to ladies, disproportionately. And second, ladies are important to responding to well being emergencies.

Ebola outbreaks are scary. We have come alongside manner from 2014/16 and the Ugandan authorities is doing all the correct issues – alerting the world, contact tracing, defending frontline well being staff, working with conventional healers, and dealing on communications to avert stigma. However there’s a actual danger that when once more the problems that have an effect on ladies and ladies throughout a well being emergency will probably be missed.

“Classes discovered” is a drained world well being trope. However in relation to the influence on ladies, we have to take motion and this is how.

5 steps to take to centre ladies

First, no-one likes lockdowns. However quarantines and lockdowns are particularly a feminist subject. They hurt ladies and put an elevated burden on their time and labour. If needed, any quarantine measures ought to be accompanied by a full help package deal for weak ladies. This implies the federal government must be working with the ladies’s sector, notably these engaged on violence towards ladies from the onset – not as an afterthought. Any quarantine measures must be met with full social and welfare help. Worldwide donors must help the Ugandan authorities to make this work.

Second, ladies well being staff are usually clustered in group well being work. This includes door-to-door work on info communication, care and get in touch with tracing. Throughout an Ebola outbreak that is excessive danger. Their private safety gear necessities must be prioritised alongside medical professionals. Furthermore, plenty of group well being staff are volunteers, but they’re the bedrock of discovering info within the Ebola response. They must be paid. Well being staff must be protected, not stigmatised or topic to violence.

Third, everybody concerned within the Ebola response ought to have coaching to detect and report sexual exploitation and abuse, together with the worldwide group. We don’t need a repeat of what occurred within the Democratic Republic of Congo – what consultants called the worst case of sexual exploitation and abuse in UN historical past – the place 82 alleged perpetrators, 21 with direct hyperlinks to the World Well being Organisation, had been accused of the abuse and exploitation of women and girls – as younger as 13.

Well being emergencies carry a mass inflow of assets to a weak scenario: that is ripe territory for exploitation. Tackling abuse and exploitation ought to by no means be an afterthought; typically thought of when it’s too late. As a substitute, it ought to be addressed as an ever-present danger when responding to well being emergencies.

Fourth, we want good information. Throughout the Ebola outbreak in 2014/16 I developed the concept of girls being conspicuously invisible. They had been in every single place in frontline group well being work – however had been completely invisible in decision-making or official information. Knowledge ought to detect not solely the place and the way Ebola is spreading however who’s most weak. This implies counting what number of males and what number of ladies are getting and dying of Ebola. Knowledge informs what measures must be put in place to assist individuals. Intercourse disaggregated information just isn’t good (most methods fail to account for non-binary individuals for instance), however it’s a begin.

Lastly, and I can’t stress this sufficient: ladies must be concerned at each degree of decision-making. From the excessive profile Jane Ruth Aceng, Minister of Well being in Uganda, to the contact tracing groups, to the surveillance squads. Ladies leaders don’t essentially imply higher illustration of girls’s points or ladies pleasant insurance policies. Nevertheless, provided that the well being sector is extremely feminised, ladies should sit across the tables that matter.

Studying from the previous

I’ve seen at first hand the hurt that well being emergencies did to ladies in Sierra Leone within the 2014/16 outbreak.

After I began shouting about it throughout the COVID-19 response, “No time for that” was accompanied by, “The place’s the proof and information?”.

Because of tireless work and mobilisation of gender and world well being consultants all over the world, we have now the proof that well being emergencies hurt ladies. Now we should act in order that this doesn’t occur once more in Uganda.

Sophie Harman, Professor of Worldwide Politics, Queen Mary College of London