BIOGRAPHY AND INSPIRING LIFE OF PROF. VINAND NANTULYA

 Vinand Nantulya is a Ugandan professor who has been lecturing in various higher institutions of learning including Harvard University, University of Geneva and University of sciences found in Philadelphia in the United States.  

Professor Vinand Nantulya is also the inventor of a chicken vaccine that he named after his mother and it is called Kuku star which is manufactured under his company name Brentec Vaccine Limited.

 This company name was generated from the name of his mother who was called Brenda Kirangi. 

Prof. Nantulya Vinand was born on 15th January 1946 at a village called Bulayila in Kibuku district which is found in the eastern part of Uganda. 

His father was called Paulo Mukatabala and his mother was called Brenda Kirangi. 

When Prof. Vinand Nantulya was still young, he suffered from a disease called Kwashiorkor and he almost died and therefore a catholic priest was called to come and baptise, pray for him so that he could not die just as a pagan and this priest named him Wynand and in the Dutch language wy is pronounced as V and therefore his people started calling him Vinand and that remained his name. 

According to prof.  Vinand Nantulya he started going to school a little bit late as he had to babysit and take very good care of his younger brother who was a baby at that time. Unfortunately after some time his baby brother died and he told his parents that he wanted to go back to school since he was jobless at the time. 

During that time he did not have any shoes or even any proper clothes that he could wear while going to school and therefore he decided to wear his elder brother’s clothes that he tied with a rope around his waist so that they could fit him properly since they were very large in size. 

He started his primary school education in Bulangira Roman Catholic School which was built by the missionaries. The school did not have very many structures and therefore Prof. Vinand and his colleagues always studied under a tree. 

But when he was promoted to primary five, his school could not accommodate him since this school stopped at only primary four and therefore he had to transfer to another school called Kachomo primary school which about 6km away from his home. 

As a result of the distance, Vinand had to forget about going for lunch and yet the school did not allow children to bring cooked food. 

Nantulya and his friends would hide roasted cassava wrapped in banana fibers in the bushes for their lunch and during lunch time they would search through the bushes and have their cassava for lunch but unfortunately sometimes they would find out that their lunch was already eaten by the squirrels. 

They would place some temporary signs so that they do not eat each other’s lunch. According to Prof. Nantulya, his father used to brew alcohol that he sold to help pay his school fees. 

Prof. Nantulya studied at St. Peter’s College for his ordinary level of education and then from there he went to Ntare School for his Advanced level of education. He later joined Dar-es-salaam University of East Africa where he studied medicine. 

He became involved in politics during his time as a student at the University and even wrote a letter to a Tanzanian newspaper that was published where he stated that the Ugandan student community did not recognise Idi Amin as the president of Uganda. 

As a result of this letter Amin wanted him to be expelled from the University but he was pardoned by the Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere. 

Nantulya said that during this time he met President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni. After graduating from the University, Prof. Nantulya decided to quit politics and instead concentrate on his career. 

He later returned to Makerere University where he did internship at Makerere University Medical School and during this time he was hired as a teaching assistant.  

He later got a scholarship to study for a post graduate degree at Makerere University. During this time he was offered an opportunity by the World Health Organisation immunology research and training center in Nairobi. 

Prof. Nantulya then enrolled for his PhD course at the University of Nairobi and he was then sent to Switzerland where he was to carry out his PhD research in the immunology of infectious diseases.

 After completing his PhD he got a job in Nairobi as a research fellow at the international Laboratory for Research and Animal diseases in Nairobi.

 This opened doors for him and this is the time when he started teaching at Harvard University. He became the senior research scientist in international health at the Harvard school of public health and his role was mentoring and guiding mid-career scientists at Harvard. 

He also served as a professor of health and international relations at the University of Geneva and senior fellow at the University of Sciences in Philadelphia. 

In 2002 he was appointed as senior health adviser at Global Fund for AIDs, Tuberculosis and Malaria in Geneva. This fund was meant to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in developing countries like Uganda. 

He was picked for the role on the basis of his hard work, passion and research on infectious diseases. 

He has published over 100 researches in International journals. Under his Brentec Vaccine Limited he has developed a chicken vaccine called Kuku star to help poultry farmers to fight the New Castle diseases that were rampant in Uganda. 

The vaccine is now being manufactured at the Uganda industrial Research Institute (UIRI). In 2006, he was appointed as the senior policy and implementation officer at the Foundation for innovative New Diagnostics which is also based in Geneva. 

His role was to find new ways of developing new and affordable diagnostic tests for Tuberculosis and other infectious diseases.

 Prof. Nantulya is married to Florence Nantulya who is a medical doctor practicing at Nakasero hospital which is found in Kampala the capital city of Uganda. The couple have five children who are scattered all over the world in different countries.