Health is the real wealth of a nation

The health of a people is their ultimate wealth. While much is said about Africa’s natural resources, there is little discussion of the most important resource - the human resource. The quality of the human resource in a country depends primarily on health and education/training.

Without productivity, wealth cannot be created. Natural resources in themselves do not translate into wealth, it is the labour input and production processes that make a difference. It is people’s productivity that translates into potential prosperity and turn natural resources into wealth. This is partly the reason why Africa is often characterised as a rich continent with poor people.

We are a continent that produces primary commodities, raw materials and low-value goods precisely because there is limited human resource capacity applied to the production process. Much of what is purportedly exported is merely extracted crudely or produced with a dearth of technology and skills.

It is only healthy people, whether formally educated or not, who can be meaningfully productive, who are able to innovate and exercise ingenuity so as to add value to the production process.

To be healthy, people have to be less burdened by disease and ailments. If they succumb to one health condition or the other they should be able to access the necessary medical attention. This depends on both availability and affordability.

One of the biggest failings of the Museveni’s regime is the absence of a functional national healthcare system. The ruler though deserves credit for previous emphasis on child immunisation, a sensible policy to ensure that newly born citizens make it through their 5th birthday. But then what happens after that?

People die of easily preventative and treatable conditions and common diseases like malaria whose treatment is relatively cheap yet unaffordable by the vast majority of the population.

Solving the problem of affordability requires increasing household income so a mother can easily pay for a proper malaria test and the appropriate prescription to properly cure her teenager facing a malaria attack. Then he/she can stay the course of going to school and not fall behind or be derailed altogether.

But increasing household income cannot be achieved through ill-thought projects like Operation Wealth Creation (OWC) literally commanded by a military general with no particularly outstanding track-record in creating wealth of his own.

Even then, attaining affordability through increased income is one thing, accessing healthcare that keeps people healthy is quite another. Many among Uganda’s middle class and the few rich increasingly find that their money can’t buy them the healthcare they need, not in Uganda.

The ruler is quick to count the number of health centres his government has constructed, he says nothing about how many health personnel we have and the amount of medical supplies needed to make public health facilities functional.

Privately run health facilities are not any better. In fact, for all their decay and institutional dysfunction, public hospitals tend to be better equipped with more human resources, which should disabuse us of the obsession with private-sector solutions to what should be a critical public good: Healthcare.

In light of today’s poor state of affordability and availability, legislating to create a national health insurance scheme is somewhat putting the cart before the horse. How many Ugandans have the income to pay for a decent health insurance plan and even if they did, where will they get the care?
Certainly not in Uganda’s current health facilities.
Or perhaps the planned Lubowa hospital won’t be the pipe dream it appears destined to be and we will have a Mulago that is a true and functional national referral hospital.

Dr Khisa is assistant professor at North Carolina State University (USA).
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