Prime
500 heart patients at risk over funding gaps
The executive director of the Uganda Heart Institute (UHI), Dr John Omagino, appears before Parliament’s Committee on Health on January 10, 2022. PHOTO/COURTESY
What you need to know:
- The Uganda Heart Institute needs Shs127 billion to make the Intensive Care Unit fully operational over a period of three years.
About 500 babies requiring heart surgery are at risk if government does not avail at least Shs20 billion needed to operationalise the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at the Uganda Heart Institute (UHI), officials have said.
Appearing before Parliament’s Committee on Health to present the Budget Framework Paper, the executive director of the Uganda Heart Institute (UHI), Dr John Omagino, revealed that the 500 babies are part of the16,000 infants born with heart complications annually.
According to data tabled before lawmakers yesterday, the Shs20 billion is part of the Shs127 billion required to fully operationalise the ICU at UHI.
Dr Omagino stated that the Shs127 billion is scheduled to be fully needed over three years.
He also revealed that another Shs6.7 billion is required to pay the specialists required to undertake the vital procedures.
“The operationalisation of the ICU, the budget is Shs20 billion for the starting year and then the human resource requirements require an additional Shs6.7 billion,” Dr Omagino said.
He added: “But the issue really is [that] we need our normal human resource structure, which caters for all these gaps and that one is fully costed to about Shs127 billion. We cannot keep transporting our people abroad. If you get a heart attack, it must be sorted out in the next few hours. All of us need this facility.”
Dr Omagonio said they are struggling to retain specialists that are capable of handling complicated heart surgeries due to the Public Service ministry’s failure to expedite the approval of the new human resource structure for the Institute.
“Public Service dismissed our request and yet the heart institute offers super specialised services. We need the specialists to run the hospital and they must be given titles that conform to international standards,” said Dr Omagino.
He added: “Public Service ministry wants to call cardiologists medical officers and special grade consultants after they trained for 10 years.”
He also urged the lawmakers to press Ministry of Finance officials to always disburse the moneys appropriated by Parliament to UHI.
The lawmakers pledged to follow up the matter with the Finance ministry.
The Jinja Municipality West MP, who is also the Shadow Minister of Health, Dr Timothy Batuwa, urged the government to always avail the required funds to UHI, saying not all heart patients can afford travelling abroad for treatment.
“Ugandans are being taken out [for treatment]. Unfortunately heart complications don’t allow enough time to stay alive. If you get a heart attack, you only have two hours before you get an intervention,” Dr Batuwa, a trained pharmacist, said.
“We have been wondering because even last year, we appropriated money to them but they [UHI] say the Ministry of Finance has not been releasing the money,” he added, vowing “to be strict on the Ministry of Finance and interrogate why we take decisions of money and it does not get there.”
In the same vein, the chairperson of the Health Committee, Dr Charles Ayume (Koboko Municipality), said his team “should have an interaction with officials from ministries of Health and Public Service and this should be a serious one.”
Looking back
Members of the Parliamentary Health Committee last year approved a request by the government to acquire a $75m (Shs285b) loan for establishing a state-of-the-art heart surgery and treatment centre in Kampala.
The current Uganda Heart Institute (UHI) at Mulago Hospital is operating on about 1,000 square metres of land (a quarter of an acre), a space management said is limiting them from handling the rising number of patients with heart diseases. The loan is from Saudi Fund for Development, OPEC Fund and BADEA Fund, which are working in a consortium, according to information from the government.
