80% of Ebola health workers get allowances, says ministry

The Ministry of Health and the president of the Uganda Medical Association (UMA), Dr Samuel Oledo, have confirmed that 80 percent of about 100 health workers that worked as emergency staff in the Mubende Ebola Treatment Unit have received their allowances.

The health workers, who had been deployed to aid other doctors in treating patients in Mubende District following an Ebola outbreak, complained of delayed allowances.

“Most of the payments have been made and about 20 percent are pending [but] are being handled well,” Mr Emmanuel Ainebyoona, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Health, told the Monitor yesterday.

Dr Oledo said about 26 out of 126 health workers have not received their pay.

He, however, appealed to the ministry to consider recruiting these health workers as permanent staff.

“As UMA, these people have been heroes, because they are the same doctors that were deployed during Covid-19. The President has always referred to them as heroes, what we agreed with Ministry of Health, when they were being redeployed in Ebola was, since they already did the verification process by public service through the health service commission, and they have these documents, they were meant to be deployed on a full term basis,” Dr Oledo  said.

“They can be employed as full-time staff in the different health facilities and as intensivists in different regional referral hospitals,” Dr Oledo added.

Different people had been deployed in the Ebola treatment centres like World Health Organisation, Health ministry, and Infectious Disease Institute.

Uganda confirmed its first Ebola Virus Disease case in September last year after the Ministry of Health confirmed a 28-year-old man who tested positive for the virus and later succumbed to the disease on the same day.

The disease killed 56 people and infected 142 others. 

In December last year, President Museveni announced that Uganda was now free of Ebola.

[email protected]