Catching up with Dr Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka

Veterinarian Dr Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka is the founder and chief executive officer of Conservation Through Public Health, an international grassroots NGO established in 2002 to promote conservation with public health by improving primary health services for people and animals around protected areas throughout Uganda.

Working with communities who rely on forests and protected areas for their survival, Dr Kalema-Zikusoka has a deep understanding of the connections between nature and health. She was a keynote speaker at the 2010 International Healthy Parks Healthy People Congress, and says she took away some valuable lessons from the Congress about the importance of developing protected-area communities without over-developing the green spaces they live in.

Can you reflect on the Congress and how it has influenced your work/thinking – have you adopted any new programs or made any changes to your existing programs to better reflect the HPHP philosophy?

The Healthy Parks Healthy People conference opened my eyes to a new way of looking at how we depend on our environment. I was used to the developing country perspective where the poorest people often live next to the national parks, and yet depend on the park to meet basic needs, such as firewood, honey and animal protein. Only when the parks are viable can we sustain our livelihoods and be in a healthy balance with nature.

The developed countries have got to the stage where many green spaces have been turned into concrete, and are struggling to find these spaces so that people can have fresh air, and open space to think, and be in a state of physical, mental and emotional wellbeing. Uganda is among the poorest countries into the world, and people living next to protected area are amongst the most marginalized in the country and Africa region. As we struggle to develop protected area communities, by using various innovative methods to break the poverty cycle, such as improved public health and reproductive health/family planning, we need to learn from developing countries not to over-develop our green spaces, so that our children do not lose the important connection with nature.

When South African National Parks, Chief Executive Officer, Dr David Mabunda, said that they are moving away from classrooms under trees, Richard Louv, conservation advocate and author of ‘Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder’, said instead that they are trying  to move back to classrooms under trees. I feel that it is important to find the halfway point between those two deep thoughts, in order to be in harmony with nature and ultimately ourselves.

At Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH), we have plans to modify and include this important element in our messages to the communities we work with, and the general public at large.

Where do you think the HPHP Congress community needs to go from here to maintain the momentum of Healthy Parks Healthy People?

The HPHP congress community needs to spread the word, and develop key statements that conference participants can distribute using various methods in their communities to influence the conservation and development agenda in their respective countries. This will help to build a global movement around this important issue. It will also be good to more closely align the HPHP philosophy with the Millennium Development Goals.

You spoke at Congress about the challenges of HPHP in the developing world – what do you think are the three biggest challenges the CTPH currently faces in achieving its aims, and what are your strategies to overcome these challenges?

The three biggest challenges CTPH faces in achieving its aims are:

1. Learning to work with different stakeholders from multidisciplinary fields, and bring them to understand how integrating is beneficial to furthering all our goals.
   We are overcoming this through strengthening our advocacy efforts, both externally and internally by getting CTPH staff trained in veterinary or public health fields to think out of the box and reach beyond their traditional disciplines to work using an integrated approach.
2. Fundraising and resource mobilizations from non-traditional sectors.
   When we started CTPH we had alot of challenges obtaining funds for public health from donors who regularly support conservation, and when we obtained public health funding from  Development Cooperation Ireland to  promote TB prevention and control in Bwindi communities, the success of this initial one year pilot project enabled us to leverage further funding to continue this program from  USAID/Uganda conservation funds targeted towards reducing threats to biodiversity (gorilla health).
3. Scaling up the CTPH concept and/or model.
   We currently want to scale up the CTPH concept and programs, either through expanding or replicating our programs or sharing best practices and lessons learned with other stakeholders who would like to adapt the model. We are asking ourselves ‘what is the CTPH model that we want to scale up?’ Defining the CTPH model is challenging, but also very exciting at the same time.

Is there any recent research conducted by Conservation Through Public Health that would be good to share with the HPHP community?

We recently conducted a hygiene and sanitation household baseline survey in Bwindi communities, and found that communities whose homes are regularly visited by critically endangered gorillas have the worst indicators. This has prompted us to give special attention to these homes by making sure that they are visited more regularly by our staff and educational comuntiy volunteer network. We have also started the process of seeking further support from UWA, for some of the gorilla permit to go towards funding more costly interventions to improve the households of communities whose homes are often visited by gorillas.

In this interview recorded at the Congress, Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka speaks about the importance of HPHP in the developing world.

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