Poll Confirms Malaria as Biggest Disease Burden Amid Budget Cuts for ACTs

Malaria has the biggest impact on people’s lives in Uganda. This has been revealed in a poll carried out under the Common Matters campaign being spearheaded by  TRAC FM and HEPS Uganda across the four major regions of the country.The poll question ran from 9th-22nd Jan 2017 on 8 radio stations across the country, with a total of 2288 responses, Malaria had the majority share of the diseases having the biggest impact on people at 43%, Next was HIV/AIDS at 24% closely followed by Tuberculosis at 18% and lastly Others at 15%

At the end of the poll question, each radio station held an on-air debate about the results with representatives from HEPS Uganda and various duty bearers in the studio. You can listen to some of the recordings of the talk shows, Click here

In our second phase of the Common Matters campaign, Trac FM partnered with HEPS Uganda to discover the practices and attitudes of Ugandans regarding the use of rapid diagnostic tests of Malaria. With a total of three poll questions to be run on this partnership, the first question was to find out the disease with the biggest impact on the life of a common Ugandan.
Although many diseases can be prevented these days, people are still affected by infectious diseases. Some diseases have a minor impact, others have a bigger impact on someone’s life. This impact can be loss of a family member, frequent illness, illness of family members, or loss of work days due to illness.