From Policy to Prevention: Uganda Is Building a More Coherent Drowning Prevention System

On April 20th, Joyous Ampurire and her daughter, Witness Akansasira, drowned when a canoe capsized on Lake Bunyonyi. Their deaths were deeply personal to one family, but the questions they raise are national. What makes a journey on Uganda's waters safer? Who is responsible for reducing risk? And what must change before another family carries the same loss? 

Drowning is still too often understood through the incident itself: the capsized boat, the missing fisherman, the child lost to water. Prevention asks us to look further back—at the conditions that made the death possible, and at the systems that could have prevented it.  

Uganda’s National Drowning Prevention Strategy 

Working Commemoration of World Drowning Prevention Day  

The National Drowning Prevention Strategy is advancing and will provides a common direction: what Uganda is trying to prevent, which interventions matter, who is responsible, and how sectors coordinate. Inland Water Transport Regulations are under development and can give practical effect to existing legal responsibilities by clarifying requirements around vessel safety, life-saving equipment, inspection and safer operation on the water. 

Government institutions, researchers, civil society and the media are increasingly converging around the same prevention agenda and these stakeholders met for a Working Commemoration of World Drowning Prevention Day in early August. The group reviewed progress and bottlenecks across the National Strategy, Regulations and public engagement. 

The group discussed the recently launched World Health Organization's PROTECT Technical Package, which reinforces the need for a coordinated system. Its seven areas span transport safety, water-safety education, occupational safety, rescue and resuscitation, childcare, infrastructure and preparedness for floods and other hazards. No single ministry can deliver all of that. For Uganda, safer transport must connect with water-safety learning; emergency response with prevention; health data with decisions; and community experience with policy. 

The value of media advocacy - helping evidence, policy choices and prevention responsibilities become better understood by the public and by Government was also discussed, along with understanding that research must be translated into forms that speak to decisions. Community experience must connect with national discussions, while global recommendations must be interpreted against Uganda's realities. 

The working group left with concrete next steps:  

• Stronger inter-ministerial engagement and regular Technical Working Group meetings around the Strategy; 
• Stakeholder and lakeside-community consultation and completion of the Regulations for submission to the Solicitor General; and 
• A shift in media coverage from episodic incidents towards contextual, prevention-oriented reporting.  

Each stakeholder left with a clearer next action. 

The Path Forward 

Uganda's experience points to a broader lesson: Government institutions must retain ownership, local organizations need to strengthen their advocacy capacity, evidence must become easier to use, and partners must organize around nationally identified priorities.  

The Global Health Advocacy Incubator (GHAI) is working alongside local civil society organizations to support Uganda’s efforts through technical assistance focused on coordination, advocacy capacity and data translation. Our drowning prevention work in Bangladesh and Vietnam provides global learnings that can be translated into the local Uganda context. 

There are encouraging signs that Uganda is building a more coordinated system. National leadership is clearer. The National Strategy has advanced. The regulatory process continues. The Working Commemoration added another sign of convergence: sectors identified dependencies between their work and agreed practical next steps across strategy, regulation, data and public engagement. 

Uganda is putting important pieces of a drowning prevention system in place. The next task is to make those pieces work together.  

That is the journey from policy to prevention.