This presentation draws on long term ethnographic fieldwork in Uganda’s borderlands with DRC to explore how public health governance actually works in settings of chronic crisis. Food insecurity, flooding and forced displacement from eastern DRC (due to incursions from the Allied Democratic Forces and other militia groups), are regular occurrences. Recognising the significance of these multiple, overlapping and re-enforcing crises for public health, we ask: how do people living in Uganda’s borderlands respond to the on-going expansion and legitimisation of official public authorities promoting authoritarian public health measures to control Ebola and COVID-19? Have any constellations of public authority emerged which offer inclusive support, and help to facilitate the control of disease outbreaks without threatening fragile livelihoods? How might understandings of the polycrisis be refined in the light of this research?