ABSTRACT
While conflict continues to threaten health development in many countries; relative peace has been secured in others. The transition from war to peace carried important political and economic opportunities for the reappraisal of social policy in general; and of health policy in particular. The health systems of countries recovering from prolonged periods of conflict often carry a double burden: the inheritance of an inappropriate and unaffordable health system developed in the pre-conflict era; and the particular policies designed to rehabilitate the Ugandan health system; and argues that they exacerbated; rather than alleviated; the health crisis inherited in 1986. In this way they posed a third burden. By anlayzing the context an process of policy formulation in the immediate post-conflict period; it explorers the rationale which lay behind the adoption of these policies and identifies potential strategies for strengthening policy development in this unstable; resource-poor and health-deprived situations