Uganda – The different health professional associations, civil society organizations and health experts say they have given several advice and informed opinions to the Government, health committee of Parliament and the ministry about the need for timely deployment and payment of allowances for medical interns and senior house officers.
According to reports shared by Dr Faith Nabushawo, a medical practitioner and seen by K47 digital news, the Parliament made recommendations to have money in the budget to take care of the allowances for interns and SHOs.
Cabinet had discussions about the same on 15 may 2023 and directed the Minister of Finance to find money for these allowances and ensure that medical interns are deployed and paid as early as possible to avoid disruption of the progress that has been made in the health care system.
Ministry of Finance in the budget speech provided 22bn to pay arrears for SHOS and medical interns of the previous years (Apr 2022-April 2023) which we greatly appreciated.
The Honourable Minister of Finance promised that he would sort the issue of deployment of the new cohort of interns (1901) who completed in 2022 ‘in a few weeks’ time.
The Medics association says, months have passed and they have not received any actual confirmation of the availability of funds or disbursement of these funds from the Ministry of Finance for the deployment, neither has the relevant ministries communicated the definitive plan of action.These facts are very glaring and known to all.
“This intentional neglect of key facts is very disturbing and is severely crippling the health service delivery, which ultimately affects the quality of care, and the plight of medical professionals in the country.”
Further to the glaring crisis is the failure by the MoFPED to release allowance of Senior House officers who ultimately are the direct supervisors of the medical interns.
“We would like to appreciate the considerable efforts by the Head of Public service and secretary to the cabinet to have this matter handled and settled at once and their recommendation to have interns deployed immediately.”
This was communicated in the meeting held on 8 June 2023 with the relevant authorities alongside Ministry of Health officials and the U.M.A.
Duty:
It is the duty of the health professionals’ associations to protect the profession and the
practitioners and this they note that they owe to the whole nation.
“We are therefore not doing our work if all our communications are hitting dead ears. If discussions can’t solve the current standoff, perhaps we ought to change strategy.
The strategy:
“As sister associations/society whose members are affected “Nurses, Pharmacists and Dental surgeons”, we shall join the scheduled nation-wide industrial action together with UMA to ensure that all interns are deployed with available funding to support their one year of mandatory medical internship period.”
