REVEALED! Secrets why gov’t froze health facilities upgrade

The Minister of Health, Jane Aceng has revealed that in the coming 2023/2024 Financial Year, there won’t be any projects undertaken for the upgrade and rehabilitation of health facilities across the country due to the absence of funds to undertake such works in the next national budget.

The Minister made the revelation while interfacing with lawmakers on Parliament’s Health Committee during the scrutiny of the 2023/2024 ministerial policy statement for the Ministry of Health.

Documents before the Health Committee indicate that although Shs233.36Bn had been allocated for the Ministry’s development budget, this was cut to Shs152.72Bn owing to the Shs80.64Bn reduction for the money to local governments to upgrade health facilities after a decision was taken to freeze these projects in the coming year.

“Under the development budget, the change was Shs80.6Bn as a reduction. There was a cut in the Government of Uganda development for local governments due to freeze under the Uganda Intergovernmental Fiscal Transfer Program (UGIFT) upgrade of health centres under UGIFT and existing projects. So in the next Financial Year, so in the next financial year, there will be no upgrades,” said Aceng.

The revelation angered lawmakers like Samuel Opio (Kole South) who argued that the decision to freeze the upgrade and construction of new health facilities won’t stop people from falling sick yet health centre IIIs are the nearest point of contact for health service delivery in this country and the moment a freeze on the upgrade is imposed, it means Government will be denying Ugandans access to medical services.

He remarked, “The moment you freeze the upgrade, the construction of new health centre IIs, it means you are denying the population of Uganda access to medical services. They would rather have reduced, rather than freezing it. Otherwise, we are going to see an issue because the population is growing, the number of people needing medical services is growing, you therefore need more health facilities. So where are they going to access these services?”

The same sentiments were reechoed by Margaret Ayebare (DWR Mbarara) said that every time the issue of absence of health facilities in Mbarara district is mentioned, people point to Mbarara regional referral hospital, yet there is a huge distance from the regional referral hospital to her people living on the borders of Mbarara district and the only public health facility to supplement the regional hospital is Rwera Health Centre IV, yet this too is serving districts of Kiruhura, Ibanda and Buhweju, on top of Mbarara district.

“So many times, we have heard that we don’t have funds to put up new district hospitals but we were convinced that we can have health centre IVs in almost every constituency. So when I see that there is no any funding for the upgrades, I wonder what I am going to take for my people in this kisanja that I am in this parliament if I can’t have a health centre III upgraded to health centre IV,” said Ayebare.

In the September 2021 State of Public Healthcare Service Delivery in Uganda by the Ministry of Health, Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital serves a population of 3,451,999 people in the districts of Buhweju, Bushenyi, Need for a RRH to t2 Mororo RRH lbanda, Isingro, Kazo, Kiruhura, Mbarara, Mitooma, Ntungamo, Rubirizi, Rwampara and Sheema.

It should be recalled that in 2018/2019, Government embarked on the Uganda Intergovernmental Fiscal Transfer Program (UGIFT) project to upgrade health centre IIs to health centre IIIs, as well as upgrade health centre IIIs to health centre IVs and out of the target of 124 Health Centre IIs, 109 were completed during the upgrade while 15 were incomplete.

In 2019/2020 38HCIIs were completed and 24 remain incomplete, while in 2020/2021 27 were completed while 37 are incomplete pending revoling of funds by the Ministry of Finance. In 2021/2022 46 health centre IIs under upgrade are still ongoing while 12 new HCIIIs are being constructed in sub-counties without any health facility and in the current 2022/2023 FY, 19 new HCIIs are being constructed while 44HCIIs are being upgraded.

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