Patients angry as Masaka hospital stops free meals

 On Wednesdays, the patients are treated to a special meal of Pilao (meat and rice).

But management says they can only provide meals for a few vulnerable patients, citing an inability to meet the expenses amid rising food prices.

A kilogramme of maize flour in Masaka costs Shs3200 up from Shs2,200, beans Shs3500  from Shs3,800 and rice Shs6,000 from Shs4,000.

The lucky inpatients currently getting free food include; those in psychiatric wards, without caretakers, and those brought in by police.

Mr Charles Tumushime, the Masaka Regional Referral Hospital principal administrator, at the weekend confirmed the changes in the feeding programme, saying they can only feed 20 percent of the inpatients.

“Our current budget on feeding can’t cater for all the 330 inpatients and their caregivers, effective this month we can only afford to provide free meals to only 20 percent of the total number of inpatients (330)-meaning only 66 are currently catered for,” he said.

On average, the hospital gets at least 1,800 outpatients and about 360 admissions daily, of which a minimum of 40 expectant mothers deliver every day.

Mr Tumushime said the facility needs about Shs250 million every financial year to sustain the feeding programme, but currently receives only Shs80 million which is not enough.

“We advise our patients who are not considered for free food to find other means of survival as additional funds are sought from the government,” he said. 

He revealed that management has over the years been getting food items from dealers on credit hoping to pay when they get quarterly releases.

Mr Tumushime said: “So, we cannot continue like this.”

 However, health activists, the Southern Region Social Rights Association (SRSRA), have protested the decision taken by the hospital management saying “it is an infringement on patients’ right to food”.

“All patients are vulnerable and they are entitled to free food and we fought for this way back in 2014, the administration then tried to reject it, but later realised its importance and resumed providing free food, we are surprised that the new management has again scrapped it”  Mr Swaibu Sulambaaya, the chairperson of SRSRA, said.

He said the association will not relent until free food for all inpatients is restated at the hospital.

“We are going to fight until all patients are given free food as it has been the case over the years,” he said.

Ms Janet Asiimwe, a diabetic patient at the hospital, said she has not had a proper meal in the past couple of weeks.

“I am currently surviving on watery porridge, which my caregiver buys at Shs1000 a cup from a nearby market,” Ms Asiimwe said.

Mr Samuel Kiweewa, another patient, said his plight is not different from that of Asiimwe.

“My relatives are far from here and I am surviving only on drugs and at the mercy of God,” he said.

This is the second time the hospital administration is suspending the feeding programme to all inpatients.

In 2009, the then management claimed that the Shs44 million they were receiving to buy food and also purchase drugs was channeled by the government to National Medical Stores, leaving nothing for the free meals. But free meals were reinstated four years later after the intervention of SRSRA.

Masaka Hospital

•Masaka Hospital was constructed in 1927, as a treatment centre for syphilis. •it was elevated to a referral in 1995

•It offers services to districts of Kalangala, Sembabule, Rakai, Lyantonde, Lwengo, Kyotera, Kalungu,  Masaka and Bukomansimbi