A burial in Bulogo Parish became something more than a farewell this week.
It turned into a public health sermon. It turned into a lecture on discipline. It turned into a reminder that leadership, in Uganda’s villages, still carries the weight of moral authority.
The occasion was the burial of the wife of a former area councilor in Bulogo Parish, Kamuli District.
Among the mourners was Pastor Pius Mugweri, a man who wears several hats at once.
He is Chairman of all LC3 Chairmen in Kamuli district. He is also LC3 Chairperson for Namwendwa Sub-county.He serves as an NRM Patriotic Mobiliser.
And he is a church pastor, a calling that shaped much of what he told the mourners gathered under the tent.
Speaking alongside honorable Basalirwa George, Pastor Mugweri used the solemn setting to deliver three linked messages to the youth and the wider community.
“D0 not Drink Everything That Comes on the Market”
The Pastor did not mince words about what he sees happening to young people in Busoga’s trading centres and village bars.
“The youth nowadays drink everything that is brought on the market, turning themselves into useless, irresponsible and indisciplined beings,” he said.
It was not an idle complaint.
It reflected a pattern researchers and journalists in Uganda have been documenting for years.
Sachet alcohol, sold cheaply in small plastic pouches, spread rapidly across the country before government intervened.
These small, inexpensive plastic sachets, often sold for the price of a bottle of water, made alcohol more accessible than ever before, and what began as a commercial innovation designed for affordability increasingly became a serious public health concern for young people and drivers.
Uganda eventually acted.
The country introduced regulations banning the manufacture and sale of sachet alcohol, a move that significantly reduced its availability in retail outlets after enforcement.
But the underlying danger has not disappeared, it has simply changed packaging.
Researchers who tested popular waragi brands sold across Uganda, including varieties widely available in bars and shops, found alarming results.
Beyond the certainty of developing cancer from ethanol exposure alone, the statistical risk of developing other health problems from popular vodka, whisky and gin brands sold in Uganda was found to be as high as one in every 654 consumers, and for other common local spirit brands, one in 1,404.
For those who prefer a particular local brand, the numbers were worse still.
Drinkers of Lira-Lira waragi face a risk as severe as one in 62, largely due to the excessive amounts of copper present in the liquor.
Pastor Mugweri’s own district has not been spared from academic scrutiny on this exact question.
A study conducted specifically in Kamuli District, the very district he helps lead as chairman of LC3 chairpersons, examined how alcohol is perceived and reported in the community.
The research noted that most respondents believed alcohol has no substantial health benefit to those who consume it, apart from short-lived pleasure and the chance to socialise with fellow drinkers.
That is precisely the mindset the Pastor was pushing back against at the burial.
Beyond Alcohol: The Hidden Danger of Energy Drinks
The Pastor’s concern was not limited to bottled spirits and beer.
He extended his warning to the energy-boosting drinks now flooding shops, kiosks and bars across Uganda.
“These energy drinks that our children are gulping down like water carry their own silent dangers,” he said.
“A young person may feel strong and alert one moment, only to suffer a racing heart, sleeplessness or worse, the very next.”
Health researchers around the world back up that concern with hard data.
Energy drink consumption has been linked to negative health consequences in youth, including risk-seeking behaviours, poor mental health, adverse cardiovascular effects, and metabolic, renal or dental problems.
The caffeine content alone is a serious concern for young bodies still developing.
Too much caffeine, particularly when several servings are consumed in one day, can lead to anxiety, insomnia, irregular heartbeat and elevated blood pressure, and in rare cases seizures or cardiac arrest, with some energy drinks containing as much as 500 milligrams of caffeine per can, the equivalent of 14 cans of cola.
The sugar hidden inside these drinks compounds the danger.
A single 16-ounce container of an energy drink may contain 54 to 62 grams of added sugar, an amount that exceeds the maximum recommended for an entire day.
Medical guidance for young people is now unambiguous on this point.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has stated that energy drinks are not appropriate for children and adolescents at all, due to the high levels of caffeine they contain, and recommends that children between the ages of 12 and 18 avoid them entirely.
Ugandan commentators have gone further, describing what they see as a public health emergency unfolding quietly in the country’s schools and nightspots.
Energy drinks have infiltrated schools, universities, nightclubs and sports arenas, turning young people into consumers of caffeine, sugar and other stimulants, with effects ranging from heart complications and mental breakdowns to reckless behaviour and addiction.
“When you mix these energy drinks with alcohol, you are inviting double trouble into your body,” Pastor Mugweri warned the mourners.
That, too, is grounded in established medical concern.
The stimulant effect of energy drinks can counteract the sedative effects of alcohol, enabling people to drink for longer, a combination public health experts have flagged as dangerous enough that regulators have warned manufacturers against adding caffeine to alcoholic beverages.
“I am appealing to every parent, every teacher, every leader in this village,” the Pastor said.
“Do not let our children believe that a bottle, whatever is written on its label, is the shortcut to strength or happiness.”
“The market will sell you anything for a profit, but it is your own body that pays the price.”
“Go and Test Your Life, Even When You Feel Well”
Having addressed the drinking crisis, Pastor Mugweri turned to a message he clearly considers just as urgent.
He urged the mourners to make regular health testing part of ordinary life, not something reserved for moments of visible illness.
“I asked the mourners to always use the Government health facilities to go and test their lives, even when they feel that they are well,” he said.
He did not stop at a general appeal.
He went further, laying out for the gathering why waiting for symptoms before seeking a test can be a fatal mistake.
“Many of the diseases that kill our people in Busoga do not announce themselves loudly,” he said.
“They creep in quietly, and by the time you feel pain, the disease has already taken hold of your body.”
“That is why I say, do not wait to feel sick before you go to hospital. Go while you are strong, so that if anything is found, it is found early enough to be treated.”
Why Early Testing Saves Lives
The Pastor’s appeal echoes a message Uganda’s own health authorities have been pushing for years, often against considerable resistance from a population that associates hospitals with sickness rather than prevention.
On HIV, the country’s testing framework is built entirely around the principle of catching infection early.
Prompt knowledge of one’s HIV status and early access to antiretroviral therapy carries the dual benefit of improving clinical outcomes for the individual and preventing further spread of the virus to others.
Yet Uganda still has ground to cover in this area.
Only about 80 percent of people living with HIV in Uganda are aware of their status, against a national goal of 90 percent identified and linked to care, meaning identifying the remaining fraction requires far more innovative and efficient screening approaches.
Beyond HIV, Uganda’s silent epidemic is arguably the rise of non-communicable diseases such as hypertension, diabetes and cancer, conditions that rarely show symptoms until they are advanced.
A countrywide risk factor survey found a 24 percent prevalence of hypertension nationally, alongside a 1.3 percent prevalence of diabetes and a further 3 percent living with pre-diabetes.
The truly alarming figure, however, is how few of those affected actually know it.
The same national survey showed that only 7 percent of people with hypertension and 51 percent of people with diabetes were even aware of their condition.
That gap between disease and diagnosis carries real consequences for families across Busoga and the rest of the country.
Delays in diagnosis of non-communicable diseases, often because patients wait for symptoms to become severe before seeking care, increase the risk that those conditions will progress into serious complications.
Cancer follows the same grim pattern.
The Parliamentary Forum on Non-Communicable Diseases has advocated for early screening specifically for cervical and prostate cancers, alongside HPV vaccination for young girls, precisely because these cancers are treatable when caught early but often fatal when discovered late.
The financial burden of late diagnosis is staggering for ordinary families.
A single cancer patient requires roughly six million shillings for drugs alone to complete a standard six-cycle course of treatment, a cost that becomes far higher, and far less likely to succeed, when the cancer is discovered only in its advanced stages.
Cervical cancer screening tells a particularly instructive story about what is possible when testing is prioritised.
Cervical cancer is the most common cancer diagnosed in women in Uganda, yet by 2020 only about one percent of clinics providing antiretroviral treatment to women had even introduced cervical cancer screening, despite the health ministry having recommended annual screening a decade earlier.
Where testing programmes have since been scaled up, the results speak for themselves.
The proportion of women who tested positive and actually received treatment rose from just 12 percent to 84 percent, nearly reaching the World Health Organization’s target for eliminating cervical cancer as a public health problem by 2030.
The Pastor’s Outline: What to Test For, and Why
Standing before the mourners, Pastor Mugweri broke his appeal down into concrete terms, naming the specific conditions he wants every adult in Namwendwa and beyond to be screened for regularly.
“Test for HIV, because knowing your status early means you can start treatment before the virus destroys your immune system,” he said.
“Test your blood pressure, because high blood pressure kills silently. A person can be walking, laughing, working in the garden, and still be carrying a condition that can trigger a stroke at any moment.”
“Test your blood sugar, because diabetes left undiscovered will slowly damage your eyes, your kidneys and your feet, until amputation or blindness becomes the price of your silence.”
“Our women must go for cervical cancer screening, and our men must not be shy to check their prostate, because cancer caught early can be treated, but cancer discovered late has already won the battle.”
“Even tuberculosis, an old disease we thought we had defeated, is still here. A cough that persists for weeks is not something to manage with local herbs alone. Go and get tested.”
He then turned to what happens when people ignore this counsel.
“The danger of refusing to test is not only that you may die. It is that you may spread what you are carrying to your spouse, to your children, to your community, all because you were too proud or too fearful to walk into a health centre.”
“A disease discovered early is a disease you can defeat. A disease discovered late is a disease that defeats you.”
“Do not let fear of a result stop you from seeking the truth about your own body. It is better to know and to fight, than to not know and to die in silence.”
“Every Leader Is Ordained by God”
Having addressed the youth on drinking and the wider community on health testing, the Pastor closed his remarks with an appeal rooted firmly in his identity as a clergyman.
He called on the mourners to hold leadership itself in higher regard.
“I as well asked them to always respect the Leaders, for every leader is ordained by God, so disrespect of leaders is denial of God himself,” he said.
For Pastor Mugweri, a man who moves between the pulpit and the council chamber, the three messages were not separate sermons at all.
They were, in his telling, three strands of the same rope.
A disciplined youth.
A tested and healthy community.
And a people who honour the leadership structures meant to serve them.
“Bury the dead with dignity, yes,” he told the mourners as the ceremony drew to a close.
“But let us also bury our bad habits, our fear of testing, and our disrespect for leadership, right here in this same grave.”
