The Parliamentary Committee on Social Services has blamed the Uganda National Medical Stores (NMS) for distributing the wrong drugs in hospitals.
The committee is moving around the eastern region to assess and see what needs to be done to improve health service delivery mostly in education and health sectors on how finances are being utilized. The committee will also be looking to see how parliament can help the health sector do their work.
Soroti district woman MP Angeline Osege, one of the members in the committee, said “They [NMS] send hospitals drugs that they have not asked for and you see that a lot of money remains in the hands of the top medical officials.
“These people send small and damaged gloves with holes to the hospitals and yet you find that there are no stitches in hospitals, this has led to lots of deaths among expectant mothers who are taken for operation, they bleed to death because the health workers in the theatres do not have stitches for stitching the wounds after operation” she said.
She called on NMS to be transparent in its work to save people’s lives. The MP said if NMS has no drugs it should inform government so appropriate drugs can be brought from other medical stores.
Osege says the government provides a budget for health every financial year but little money is sent to the hospitals. She explained that in 1969 100 million shillings was budgeted for the building of hospitals and other modalities but up this very day no facilities are in those hospitals.
“The hospitals that were built there in the early 1960s were meant to help people in critical condition on admission and they have never been enlarged.
“Imagine; a hospital like Butaleja is in a poor state, the facilities and equipments are not there because these were the hospitals that were built in the early 1960s and the equipment that was put there has long gone. Butaleja right now has no power [electricity] and doctors use candles light or phone lights for carrying out operations” she added.
However, , Jacob Opolot Mooka, the chairman of the committee and MP for Pallisa county in eastern Uganda, says maternal health is still demanding. Mama kits should be given freely because only a few expectant mothers can afford those kits.
“Nurses and midwives do sometimes remove some of the materials contained in the mama kits and you find that some things are lacking when mothers go to deliver,” he said.
Opolot says although health workers are expected to serve the people, living standards and conditions are poor. He urged them to endure to serve the communities regardless of what they earn because Parliament is “struggling hard” to see that their salaries are increased.
During their assessment tour of the health sector, the committee discovered that health centre IIIs and IVs do not have testing equipment, which has led to poor medical prescriptions.
Opolot added that the committee had also found that patients share ARVs.
“Sharing of medicine reduces on the doses and this makes the body to be drug resistant,” he said.
Coupled with inadequate drugs in the health facilities, poor pay of the doctors has forced them to go to other countries looking for greener pastures, Opolot added.
Jacqueline Amongin, the Ngora district woman representative, noted that in the next financial year the committee wants to see all the hiccups in the health centers amended.
“We are moving around to see how some issues like payment of workers’ salaries, time of arrival among the health workers, no wash rooms, latrines or toilets and blockage of the sewage system will be checked on because the ninth parliament is committed to serving the people,” she said.
In a related matter, the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC), who were also in the eastern region to monitor and assess how finances had been used for service delivery, unearthed that a lot of money meant for health service delivery had been misappropriated by Soroti municipal council authorities and a medical officer.
The chair person of PAC, Jack Sabiiti, and his entourage found out that 46 million shillings intended for drugs had been accounted for but how it was used was not clear.
Sabiiti tasked the municipal officials to bring all the drugs meant for the municipal health centers with evidence. PAC members grilled officials from Soroti municipality, Soroti and Amuria district over the claims.
