Dr. Edward Kanyesigye (informally known as D. Ned) is a triumphant man. The founding dean of Uganda Christian University’s (UCU) School of Medicine (SoM) will this July celebrate the graduation of his pioneer students. Getting the SOM up and running was a lifetime achievement, and it gives him great joy to see his first students graduate.

As a child, Juliet Sekabunga Nalwanga was fascinated whenever she saw tellers in banks with bundles of cash. As such, she made up her mind to work in a bank. However, as she grew up, she realized that the money saved there was not actually theirs. She started feeling the pull to save human life instead. She opted for a career in medicine.

In 2021, Joseph Mukaawa lost his father to COVID-19. When he came back from the burial, he started developing signs of COVID-19 and tested positive. “I thought that since I was young, I could overcome it. So, I started self-medicating,” he said. 

Uganda Christian University’s (UCU) Dean of the School of Dentistry (SoD),  James Magara, was among the 10 pioneer students getting a Bachelor of Dental Surgery at Makerere University in 1988. Thirty years later, in 2018, Magara’s son, David Magara, was among the pioneer students of UCU’s Bachelor of Dental Surgery program. 

If anyone had been in the shoes of Abaliwano Yvette, chances are he/she would have made the same career decision. Yvette, a student of Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery at the Uganda Christian University (UCU) School of Medicine (SoM), is surrounded by medical professionals at her home.

By January 28, 2023, Uganda had registered 170,328 cases of coronavirus. Of those, 3,630 had died. Florence Bwanika is part of that tragic statistic. Bwanika, a renowned veterinary doctor and academic, succumbed to the pandemic on January 17, 2021, the time Uganda was just shaking itself off the first wave of the pandemic. Uganda later had the second wave of the virus, which was more deadly.