Karolinska and Makere University in Uganda establish joint sustainable health centre

On Thursday 16 September the Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Health (CESH) was inaugurated. It's a digital competence center that has been established together with Makerere University in Uganda. The purpose of the center is to promote sustainable health and contribute to Agenda 2030 with the help of a long-term partnership.

Already in January this year, Karolinska Institutet and Makerere University signed a collaboration agreement on the establishment of the center, and yesterday the inauguration took place digitally. The collaboration between the universities has been going on for over 20 years.

"This new centre is inspired by the ambitions of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals that aims to improve health and wellbeing for all, across geographical and generational boundaries and socioeconomic strata. COVID-19 has unveiled the sad consequences of health inequities. Most notably, poor countries lag far behind the rich in terms of access to vaccines and other opportunities to effectively and humanely counter the spread of infection," says President Ole Petter Ottersen.

During the inauguration the following topics were discussed:

• the opportunities and challenges of sustainable health
• why the center has been created and what the objectives are
• how partnerships and universities can contribute to sustainable health

The inauguration was moderated by SVT's climate correspondent Erika Bjerström and Roy Mayega, senior lecturer at Makerere University (School of Public Health at the College of Health Sciences). Speakers from Karolinska Institutet were President Ole Petter Ottersen, Tobias Alfvén and Giulia Gaudenzi, both at the Department of Global Public Health.

This article was first published on September 17 by Karolinska Institutet.