Kampala, 5 June 2026 — Uganda has taken a decisive step toward a coordinated national response to antimicrobial resistance (AMR) with the launch of the NIAMR project at the Protea Hotel, Kampala. Officiated by the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Health, Dr. Diana Atwine, the event formally launched the project and opened its First National Community Engagement and Involvement (CEI) — pairing the launch with a structured effort to hear from the people who generate and use AMR data across the country.
Executive summary
On 5 June 2026, at the Protea Hotel in Kampala, the NIAMR project was officially launched by the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Health, Dr. Diana Atwine, who cut the ribbon and signed a commemorative board with representatives of the partner institutions. NIAMR — developing and evaluating a national, integrated, interoperable digital platform for AMR surveillance — is convened by Makerere University with the Ministry of Health, Mbarara University of Science and Technology and Baylor-Uganda, and funded by the UK Department of Health and Social Care through the NIHR. The plenary drew a broad One Health coalition from government, academia, partners, surveillance sites, civil society and community members with lived AMR experience, alongside an online audience.
A single message ran through the plenary: Uganda's AMR data is abundant but fragmented and siloed, so the platform's value lies in interoperability and standardisation rather than new data collection — and, above all, in improving the quality of decisions. Several speakers, most pointedly Commissioner Paul Mbaka, warned that dashboards tend to be informative but not action-oriented, and urged the team to design for "micro-decisions" at the point of action. The One Health phased approach (human health first, scaling to animal and environmental sectors), the centrality of community engagement (NIHR), and sustainability and workforce/supply risks were recurring themes. The initiative was consistently anchored in the second National Action Plan on AMR (2025–2028/29), the Health Security NAP and the Ministry's digital-health strategy, and framed within the concurrent Ebola response.
This account covers the launch and plenary; the afternoon breakout and requirements-gathering sessions are documented separately in the First National CEI engagement report.
Introduction and background
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a growing public-health threat that disproportionately affects low- and middle-income countries such as Uganda. Despite substantial investment, AMR and antimicrobial-use surveillance data remain underutilised, largely because they are fragmented across institutions, laboratories, sectors and reporting platforms and are insufficiently integrated or translated into real-time intelligence. The NIAMR project — funded by the UK Department of Health and Social Care through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), and implemented by Makerere University with the Ministry of Health, Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST) and Baylor College of Medicine Children's Foundation-Uganda — will develop and evaluate an AI-driven, interoperable digital AMR data platform supporting real-time surveillance and decision-making, and eventually integration across the One Health sectors.
The launch, community engagement and involvement event was convened to formally launch the project and to open a national strategic dialogue on the challenges, interoperability, governance and sustainability of an integrated digital AMR surveillance system. Its three objectives were: (i) to launch the project and position it within Uganda's AMR, digital-health, One Health and health-security priorities; (ii) to facilitate stakeholder dialogue on the opportunities, challenges, governance, interoperability and sustainability considerations; and (iii) to strengthen stakeholder engagement, partnerships and national ownership.
The project carries NIHR award NIHR168786 and runs for 36 months, from February 2026 to January 2029, with the wider implementing coalition including the National Health Laboratories and Diagnostics Services (NHLDS), the Ministry of Water and Environment, and the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF).
The scale of the AMR challenge
AMR is associated with an estimated 1.3 million deaths worldwide each year, and in Uganda AMR-associated mortality surpassed deaths due to malaria, HIV and tuberculosis in 2019 (Murray et al., 2022). When common infections such as pneumonia, meningitis, sepsis and abdominal infections stop responding to the medicines meant to treat them, care becomes harder, longer and more expensive.
"When infections become resistant to antibiotics, treatment becomes more difficult, more expensive and sometimes impossible." — Dr. Henry Kajumbula, Chairperson, Uganda's National Antimicrobial Resistance Committee
Event overview
The launch was held on 5 June 2026 at the Protea Hotel, Kampala, with an online audience participating virtually. It convened representatives from line ministries, departments and agencies across the One Health sectors; academic and research institutions; development and implementing partners; national AMR experts and surveillance sites; civil-society organisations and community members with lived AMR experience; the National One Health Platform; and health-facility representatives. The methodology combined stage-setting, opening and welcome remarks, a project overview, the official launch, and partner and stakeholder remarks in the morning plenary, followed by parallel breakout sessions for requirements gathering in the afternoon.
Summary of proceedings
Opening and welcome
Dr. Henry Kajumbula (Chair, National AMR Sub-Committee; Makerere University) set the stage, locating the workshop within Uganda's AMR response since the first National Action Plan (2018) and the Global Action Plan, and framing AMR as a One Health problem. He noted that while surveillance has generated substantial data, its accessibility and utilisation have been the persistent weakness — precisely the gap the platform is meant to close by synthesising data scattered across sectors and institutions.
"Surveillance and research generates the data that guides all interventions — the fulcrum on which the response to AMR revolves." — Dr. Henry Kajumbula, Chair, NAMRSC
Prof. Charles Olaro (Director General of Health Services, MoH) gave the official welcome, underscoring the scale of the problem — over 32,000 AMR-related deaths a year, largely invisible in routine health-information systems — and the need for multi-sectoral, real-time, data-driven surveillance. He situated the initiative within the National Action Plan on AMR and the Ministry's digital-health framework and its use of AI, and briefed participants on the concurrent Ebola outbreak, then confined to the Kampala metropolitan area and presenting largely through private facilities.
"If you attribute it, you find that over 32,000 deaths occur that are related to AMR." — Prof. Charles Olaro, DG, MoH
Mr. Nicholas Magara (Assistant Commissioner, Ministry of Water and Environment), on behalf of the Chair of the National One Health Platform, emphasised the environmental dimension of AMR and the fragmentation of data systems as the persistent barrier to evidence-based decision-making. He positioned the platform as a means to enhance coordination, data quality and real-time monitoring, and stressed common standards, data governance and sustainability for long-term ownership.
"This project is not simply about technology; it is about transforming data into knowledge and knowledge into action." — Nicholas Magara, for the Chair, National One Health Platform
Project overview
Prof. Josephine Nabukenya (Project Lead) presented the project. She characterised Uganda's AMR data as abundant but siloed across disconnected platforms, and framed NIAMR's core proposition as interoperability and standardisation rather than new collection — enabling existing sources to communicate in a common data language. She set out the design (One Health, human-health-first phasing; hosted at the MoH National Health Laboratory), the 36-month timeline (situational analysis, development, piloting at Ministry-selected sites, evaluation and scale-up), a firm commitment to co-design, and a governance model led by the National One Health Platform Committee. She asked stakeholders to articulate their data needs and to support data governance, data use and sustainable scale-up. A short platform video was screened.
"We are not going to sit in our labs — we will come and co-design with you; whatever we do will be led by your needs." — Prof. Josephine Nabukenya, Project Lead
"The challenge currently is, there is a lot of data on AMR in animals, humans, wildlife and environment. Each of those sectors picks their own data. And yet, when it comes to AMR, it is a challenge that cuts across, so the different sectors need to support each other." — Prof. Josephine Nabukenya, project lead, Makerere University
She underlined why a One Health approach is essential: "When you're treating an animal, you use the same antibiotic that will treat a human. And the same would be spread in water and environment. So it is only important that all these sectors … come together and solve their data challenges as one group."
Official launch
The Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Health, Dr. Diana Atwine, officially launched the project — cutting the ribbon and signing the commemorative board with partner representatives, followed by a group photograph. Her remarks framed AMR as a silent but severe threat, potentially graver in future than the concurrent Ebola outbreak, and noted that resistance has moved from hospitals into the community. She anchored the initiative in the second National Action Plan on AMR (2025–2028/29), the Health Security NAP and the digital-health strategy, and stressed two priorities beyond data aggregation: real-time, action-oriented dashboards; and investment in genomic research and Uganda's indigenous medicinal plants. She committed the Ministry to hosting and continuously using the integrated system.
"People don't appreciate the magnitude of this problem because it is silent — in future it might be worse than the Ebola we are fighting now." — Dr. Diana Atwine, PS, MoH
"We are looking at a platform that brings all the information on AMR from all areas, being governed by one health. By one health, we refer to AMR in humans, animals like agriculture, in wildlife and in environment." — Dr. Diana Atwine, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Health
"So, we are trying to get all this information … stored in one place at the Ministry of Health so that whoever is looking for information regarding AMR can easily access this," she added. "In future, we are going to have the dashboards that will be able to have all [the] landscape of AMR in the country under one health."
The Permanent Secretary also used the launch to appeal to Ugandan researchers to find local solutions — to develop medicines and formulations that can replace drugs that are no longer working, and to harness the country's rich store of herbal medicine. She urged the public to stop taking antibiotics without a prescription, a key driver of resistance alongside overuse and incomplete treatment courses.
Prof. Barnabas Nawangwe (Vice Chancellor, Makerere University) affirmed the University's research commitment and its multi-disciplinary partnerships, noting that the project is led from an informatics rather than a clinical background and will generate local evidence to inform decision-making.
"This initiative will provide local evidence to inform and support decision-making." — Prof. Barnabas Nawangwe, VC, Makerere University
"If we don't have a healthy population, we can forget about development. People who are not healthy cannot work effectively or contribute fully to the economy." — Prof. Barnabas Nawangwe, Vice Chancellor, Makerere University
Partner and stakeholder remarks
Commissioner Paul Mbaka (MoH, Division of Health Information) delivered the plenary's most pointed intervention, arguing that the platform will stand or fall on decision quality. He distinguished strategic decisions (well served by existing monitoring and evaluation) from "micro-decisions" at the point of action, where the greatest impact lies, and cautioned that dashboards are typically informative but not action-oriented. He urged the team to be deliberately prescriptive about the actions to take when patterns emerge, to plan for the response capacity that insights demand (citing a malaria-surveillance example where alerts outran the capacity to act), and to unpack the routine one-line promise to "promote data use."
"Dashboards that are informative but not action-oriented do not give clarity on what action to take." — Commissioner Paul Mbaka, MoH / DHI
Ms. Heidi Surridge (Senior Research Manager, NIHR), joining online for the funder, placed community engagement and involvement at the centre of the platform's success — communities as true partners whose voices should shape design and governance. She confirmed alignment with NIHR's 2026–2030 global health-security priorities and flagged the open 2026 Global Health Research call on AMR (outline application deadline 8 July 2026).
"However brilliant this technology is, it is only as effective as the people who shape it." — Heidi Surridge, NIHR
Dr. Solome (WHO) welcomed the initiative, noting Uganda's track record of contributing to global surveillance and policy, the outstanding challenges of sustainable financing and data translation, and the importance of capturing community-level data. She welcomed implementation within the government system as a sustainability safeguard.
"Let us ensure it delivers not only data but measurable impact for communities, health systems and national development." — Dr. Solome, WHO
Dr. Martha (Commissioner, MoH) raised two supply- and standards-side points: involving pharmacies, which see demand and the drivers of resistance but are often excluded from these processes; and aligning clinical guidelines across regions, using research evidence to decide uniformly which antibiotics to retire.
"We should remove antibiotics that are completely resistant on the basis of evidence, rather than arbitrarily." — Dr. Martha, Commissioner, MoH
Mr. Rogers Kisame (Baylor-Uganda) reinforced that the platform builds on an existing digital foundation — electronic data capture and real-time transmission from surveillance sites — rather than starting from scratch, and echoed the insight-to-action theme, noting the recurring question of what action follows reports. He committed Baylor to continued support for community engagement and analytics.
"Beyond giving insights, we need to move from decision-making to action." — Rogers Kisame, Baylor-Uganda
The launch also drew remarks from MUST, the British High Commission, the Food and Agriculture Organization, and Uganda's AMR governance bodies — including the Parliamentary Forum on AMR and the National One Health Platform.
Key issues and emerging themes
Fragmentation is the problem; interoperability and standardisation is the solution. AMR data is abundant but siloed across disconnected systems. The platform's value proposition is not new collection but harmonising existing sources into a common data language.
From insight to action. The strongest cross-cutting message: dashboards and reports have been informative but not action-oriented. The platform must support decisions — including "micro-decisions" at the point of action — and be prescriptive about what to do when patterns emerge.
One Health, delivered in phases. A One Health endeavour beginning with human health and scaling to animal and environmental sectors, with governance led by the National One Health Platform Committee.
Community engagement as a design principle. The funder and Baylor positioned communities — including those with lived AMR experience — as true partners whose input should shape design and governance.
Sustainability, workforce and supply. Partner-dependency, financing, workforce and commodity-supply constraints were flagged as risks to continuity; implementation within the government system was welcomed as a safeguard.
Alignment with national and global frameworks. Anchored in the second NAP on AMR (2025–2028/29), the Health Security NAP, the digital-health strategy, the Global Action Plan and the WHO Global Research Agenda — and situated within the concurrent Ebola response.
Listening first: the First National CEI
Beyond the ceremony, the larger part of the day was devoted to listening. In four parallel breakout rooms — human health; animal health and wildlife; environmental health; and cross-cutting One Health — participants from government, academia, laboratories and communities shared lived experience and mapped what a national AMR data platform must get right. Their contributions were consolidated in a plenary and now feed directly into NIAMR's implementation roadmap. Read the full engagement report →
The road ahead
NIAMR will be delivered over 36 months in five sequential phases, beginning with a national situation analysis and baseline assessment of how AMR data is generated, managed and shared in Uganda; through development and piloting of the platform in high-burden areas; to evaluation of its impact and a costing study to support scaling across all One Health sectors. By the project's close in early 2029, the goal is a platform that finally gives the country a single, shared picture of resistance to act on.
NIAMR is led by Makerere University and funded by the UK Department of Health and Social Care through the NIHR (award NIHR168786), in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, MUST, Baylor-Uganda, NHLDS, the Ministry of Water and Environment, and MAAIF.
