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Govt to recruit 760 health personnel
Health workers attend to a Covid-19 patient in the ICU at Mulago National Referral Hospital in June. PHOTO/ FILE
What you need to know:
The health workers will be trained in critical care and also carry out other activities in districts.
Government is set to hire 766 health workers to boost the capacity handling Covid-19 in all facilities as the country prepares for subsequent waves.
Dr Jane Ruth Aceng, the Health minister, yesterday said the Ministry of Public Service has cleared the recruitment of the health workers, and though none has been recruited yet, the process is ongoing.
“In the last wave, initially, we had recruited more than 1,300 health workers that we were paying on contract and also paying their allowances. They were distributed to different areas across the country. But from wave to wave, there is always need to have more health workers on board; those that can be trained, especially in critical care and also to carry out other activities in districts,” Dr Aceng said.
She added that these health workers will be recruited by health service commission and will undergo training to boost capacity in all facilities.
According to the Ministry of Health, Uganda has graduated into the second wave with a sharp increase in the number of asymptomatic, severe ad critical cases as well as a significant change in disease profile which requires additional adequate human resource to operationalise High Dependency Unit (HDU) and Intensive Care Unit (ICU) capacity.
“In this regard, the Ministry of Health with support from United States, government through Unites States Agency for International Development (USAID) invites applications from suitably qualified candidates to fill the following positons for a period of six months on non gratuitable local contract terms to support the national response against Covid-19,” reads a July 21 Ministry of Health advert .
According to the advert, the government had advertised 70 positions that include intensivist, anaestheologist, and medical officers.
Government has often raised concerns over shortage of critical care specialists in the country such as intensivists and anesthesiologist.
However, most of the health workers have blamed this on poor pay which has forced them to look for greener pastures.
Dr Mukuzi Muhereza, the general secretary Uganda Medical Association (UMA), said the country has about 68 critical care specialists, which is less to serve a population of more than 40 million people.
Uganda has registered more than 91,162 Covid cases with 70,519 recoveries and 2,425 deaths.
ALLOWANCES
AIthough government is set to recruit more medics, some frontline workers across the country said they had not been paid their allowances. In Katakwi District, the health officials opposed the Ministry of Health’s call to recruit more Covid -19 frontline health officers to oversee the administration of vaccines. They said it is not reasonable to recruit more workers yet the government has failed to pay those who are working. “For the last three months, the officers overseeing the Covid- 19 fight have not received any allowances. They are using their own money to oversee and monitor reported cases,” the district health officer, Dr Emmanuel Ongala, said.
In Bunyangabu, the district health officer, Dr Richard Obeti, said since the first wave of lockdown, the health workers, who do surveillance and laboratory work, have not received their allowances. “We have not received any funds to pay frontline health workers for risk allowances. We only support them through our partners like Baylor Uganda,” Dr Obeti said.
The director of Fort Portal Regional Referral Hospital, Dr Alex Adaku, however, said all frontline health workers at the facility are receiving their allowances.
In the last financial year, Cabinet cleared the Ministry of Finance to cut Shs373 billion toward the Covid-19 response.
