TASKED! Donors want gov’t to provide wages for VHTs

Flavia Mpanga, Health Specialist at UNICEF asked Government to ensure the welfare of the VHTs

By our reporter

Development partners have urged Parliament to ensure that the Village Health Team members are paid a monthly salary like all health workers, instead of leaving their welfare to donors.

The call was made Thursday 10th February by a team of a group Health Development Partners while meeting with MPs of Parliament’s Health Committee to discuss the journey to Uganda’s health sector financing.

Flavia Mpanga, Health Specialist at UNICEF asked the Government to ensure the welfare of the VHTs is taken as a priority because the current arrangement leaves them to serve as volunteers, yet this isn’t sustainable.

“Government is putting in very little money, it is almost tokenism for the VHT program, so we think that voluntarism can’t be sustained. So if the Government can pick up that salary component, you will see overpowering support from partners. Global Fund puts in money to train, it just doesn’t happen without support,” said Mpanga.

Her remarks were in response to a plea made by Margaret Ayebare (DWR Mbarara) who asked the development partners to consider taking care of the welfare of donors and pick up from the contribution of the Government.

Ayebare remarked, “When Covid-19 came, everybody was thinking how these VHTs can help, but still no one was thinking about them. I want to request the development partners to think about these VHTs. Whatever we can begin with, maybe the government can look into that and see how to take over from there after looking at what the pilot and how best they can perform.”

However, donors informed Ayebare that the biggest portion of the welfare of VHTs was shouldered by donors, not the Government.

Meanwhile, Christabel Abewe, Health Financing Specialist at World Health Organisation (WHO) has revealed that plans are ongoing to reintroduce the National Health Insurance Scheme Bill that will see Government contribute the biggest chunk, instead of deducting from salaries of employees, saying research has shown such arrangements aren’t sustainable.

“The suggestion before was to keep employees contributing without much government contribution coming in. That is something we are strongly advocating for, to try to get the Government to put in a lot of financing but also subsidise those in the informal sector because there is new evidence against taxing salaried labour to finance insurance schemes across the world,” said Abewe.