Strategic Objectives
- Promote conservation of gorillas through gorilla health and habitat conservation
- Promote a One Health and Population, Health and Environment (PHE) approach to addressing some of the most pressing public health and environmental concerns in and around protected areas in Africa.
- Monitor and track zoonotic disease transmissions between wildlife, humans and livestock to prevent outbreaks of deadly diseases.
- Empower local communities, with a special focus on women, to be stewards of their environment and to practice health seeking behavior through the VHCT model.
- Create sustainable income and improve livelihoods for community volunteers through income generating projects and Village and Savings Loan Associations.
- Identify and cultivate sustainable sources of funds to continue running CTPH programs.
- Advocate for One Health and PHE approaches to be institutionalized into policies at the regional, national and multilateral level.
Milestones
- Analyzing over 6,000 gorilla fecal samples at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park for diseases that they could be sharing with people, livestock and other wildlife, which has reduced cross species disease transmission.
- Conducting behavior change communication to more than 25,000 rural residents through home visits on family planning methods, hygiene, and infectious diseases that can be transmitted between people, wildlife, and livestock; a third of the homes having regular “interactions” with gorillas.
- Developing the first innovative flip charts for peer education on the “gorilla conservation through public health message”, on ecofriendly sisal based grain sacks.
- Educating more than 7,000 Bwindi community members about the links between conservation, public health, ecotourism, and sustainable livelihoods through community drama workshops, brochures and five health message signposts.
- Creating 444 Village Health and Conservation Team (VHCT) community volunteer networks around Bwindi Impenetrable, Budongo Forest, Virunga and Mount Elgon National Parks improving the health of people and animals, and their conservation attitudes. Fifty percent of our VHCTs are women, supporting increased female leadership roles within the communities around the protected areas in which we work.
- Starting the third pilot Community Based Depo-Provera project in Uganda of three monthly interval contraception injections given by trained CTPH community health volunteers through a partnership with FHI360, ensuring better compliance of women on this contraception, which eventually became a national policy.
- Increasing the number of women on modern family planning from 20% to 60%, above the 30% Uganda national average, 50% of whom are from villages bordering the park and visited by gorillas
- Increasing the number of hand washing facilities of homes bordering Bwindi Impenetrable National Park from 10% to 60%, of which 30% of the homes border the park and considered at higher risk for human/gorilla interaction including disease transmission.
- Enrolling more than 50 individuals living around Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in TB treatment (implementing Community Based Direct Observation of Treatment methods) increasing TB case detection and treatment success above the national average.
- Training 70 Conservation Community Animal Health Workers (CCAHWs) including pastoralist community volunteers around Queen Elizabeth and Pian Upe Wildlife Reserve in Eastern Uganda, in animal and human disease issues and human/wildlife conflict resolution thus empowering community conservation leaders and promoting sustainable livelihoods.
- Providing opportunities for more than 3,000 people in rural local communities to access internet services for conservation and health education purposes.
- Training more than 200 rural youth, 40% women, in basic computer applications at our two remote solar-powered Telecentres.
Strategic Programs
CTPH has three strategic programs to reduce threats to the endangered mountain gorillas, other wildlife and their habitats: gorilla conservation, One Health and alternative livelihoods. We achieve these programs through delivering services that improve wildlife, livestock and community health and conservation education through peer-to-peer education and community-based behavior change communication. We also conduct research and advocacy to achieve our goals.