Prime
Cabinet to discuss delayed deployment of medical interns today
Policemen arrest some of the pre-medical interns who were protesting in Kampala over delayed deployment on April 24, 2023. PHOTO/ABUBAKER LUBOWA
What you need to know:
- This comes almost a month after pre-medical interns were involved in running battles with police as they held a demonstration in Kampala City over the Health Ministry’s failure to deploy them to government hospitals to attain training for their respective medical programmes.
Top government officials will today meet to discuss the delayed deployment of medical interns, this publication has learnt.
In a May 14 letter, Mr Richard Idro, an associate professor of paediatrics, Child Health and Paediatric Neurology, said although Cabinet will hold a meeting over the issue, he understands that the main proposal on the table is not to pay the “new-borns” of the profession but rather have parents pay the costs of the compulsory supervised practice [internship].
“We were informed that with the rapid increase in numbers, the government can no longer afford to pay these young people,” Mr Idro said in the letter addressed to the President, adding: “Mr President, this is choosing an easy way out but the long term impact is potentially disastrous.”
This comes almost a month after pre-medical interns were involved in running battles with police as they held a demonstration in Kampala City over the Health Ministry’s failure to deploy them to government hospitals to attain training for their respective medical programmes.
In a response captured in a circular, the ministry’s director general of Health Services, Dr Henry Mwebesa, said the one-year training would begin after certain important issues were ironed out.
Mr Idro, who previously served as the president of the Uganda Medical Association (UMA), said having parents shoulder the financial burdens of internship is not practicable.
“Mr President, let us peek into what the immediate future will look like. We shall be sending a poorly fed, hungry, and unhoused young lady, whose parents in Namutamba literally sold everything to see her through Mbarara University Medical School to Arua hospital for her first six months of internship and then to Kabale hospital for the next six months. We expect her to rent herself a house, dress and feed herself and at 3am safely operate on a mother with obstructed labour or safely resuscitate a convulsing child the next morning!” Mr Idro said.
He added: “Moreover, we [are] asking the Senior House Officer or trainee specialist, a mother of two whose children slept hungry and who we also decided should not be paid for the next three years to supervise and mentor the intern in these procedures. Can we imagine what will be happening in our hospitals and the safety and security of Ugandans? This is exactly why you [President] agreed to pay them when we met in 2021 and 2022.”
Nearly 2,000 highly trained students, some of whom have the best brains in the country, according to Mr Idro, have been seated at home with the same number expected to join them in June and July.
The continuous strikes from members of the medical fraternity continue to cripple health facilities in the country.
Besides demonstrations held over delayed deployment, the medical officers have often held strikes over salary arrears, allowances and other poor working conditions.
Mr Idro hopes that the problems can be resolved.
