Makerere’s lung institute to become Uganda Lung Institute

Kampala, Uganda | URN | Makerere University Lung Institute (MLI) is in the process of expanding to become Uganda’s tertiary center for all lung-related research and care. The latest development comes as Uganda reports an increasing burden of  respiratory infections.

Speaking to URN in an interview, Dr. Bruce Kirenga, the Director of Makerere University Lung Institute (MLI) at the College of Health Sciences in Mulago, said that the institute has already obtained key approvals from the government and Makerere University to take a national outlook and become the Uganda Lung Institute.

Kirenga, who is also a senior lung specialist, says this transition will help them have a bigger reach within the country and bring specialists closer to people.

Currently, however, according to statistics by the Uganda Medical and Dental Practitioners’ Council (UMDPC), there were only eight lung specialists technically referred to as pulmonologists registered in 2024.

Kirenga says this number has not changed, as they are still barely ten, but says the transformation into a national institution means that they will have to train more such specialists.

Since the majority of the current specialists are foreign-trained, Kirenga says the plan is to train about three such specialists per year under a fellowship programme whose curriculum has already been approved by Makerere University.

He notes that they will, in the meantime, employ a technique of task shifting and doing virtual clinical consultations, such that patients who need such specialists are seen from where they are, using doctors in upcountry hospitals.

While there are no empirical studies that have been done to determine the exact prevalence of lung diseases, Kirenga says that the university’s lung institute alone has had the number of patients growing almost 400 percent in the last few years.

Generally, the results of a 2020 study done by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine estimate the prevalence of any chronic respiratory condition in Uganda to be 20 percent, with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and asthma being the most common.

The ten-year old institute, being made national, became specifically popular during the COVID-19 pandemic, whereby they conducted several studies on treatment and also set up a unit to monitor post-COVID syndrome or conditions, in addition to a lung rehabilitation facility for both those who survived COVID and also Tuberculosis survivors.