Ntungamo District local leadership on spot over poor health service delivery

By Moses Agaba

Ntungamo

District local leadership of Ntungamo district has been accused of being weakened and compromised to effectively monitor health service delivery and confidently take rightful actions.

This comes during the evaluation meeting of district leaders and health workers in the district with the State House Health Monitoring Unit on thursday at Ntungamo district headquarters.

Dr Julian Nabatanzi, the Deputy Director of the State House Health Monitoring Unit said that most of the District leaders and Health workers in Ntungamo district have been hiding behind having a connection to the first family of Uganda to politically interfere and intimidate the health service delivery in the district.

“The CAO is held at ransom, the DHO is held at ransom, the in-charges   are held at ransom everybody knows the President everybody knows Mama everybody is a General, General Savimbi    ”. Said Dr Nabatanzi.

She adds that the rewards and sanctions committee has over 20 incomplete cases of indiscipline files for health workers that have not been dealt with in the district.

Nabatanzi says that during their monitoring tour, healthcare workers in Ntungamo district recorded frequent absenteeism as most of the health centers in charge own private clinics they give much of their time over the government facility, as this has hindered service delivery noting an incident of a maternal death that happened on October 7^th 2022 at Itojo hospital because the medical officer was absent.

Geoffrey Mucunguzi the Ntungamo Resident District commissioner –RDC for Ntungamo district vows to use his office to deal with corrupt leaders especially the health workers in the district after records indicate they have been cheating on the patients.

Mucunguzi says that the operation will continue even when the State House Health Monitoring Unit will be out of the district.

Nasser Mukiibi The Chief Administrative Officer for Ntungamo district says that the district has about 4 health centers that have to upgrade their status adding that these will need more staff saying that the Human Resource officer is working closely with the District Health Officer so as to have more staffing by the end of this financial year.

A team from the state house health monitoring unit spent about 3months in Ntungamo district investigating service delivery though more than Ugx 3 billion monies were quizzed as a result of misuse of government resources, absenteeism the leading case in the district, ghost workers, wrongly paid allowances among others.