Prime
Health ministry must look into idle Katajula HC III
The Health Minister Dr. Jane Ruth Acen [centre] interacting with the Tororo District leaders and medical workers at Tororo District General Referral Hospital after visiting the private wing of the hospital. Photo by Joseph Omollo
What you need to know:
The issue:
Marternal mortality
Our view:
Katajula’s new maternity ward was supposed to alleviate this tragic circumstance. But it is left to lie idle where it is most needed. This is a scandal which should immediately interest the Health ministry.
How do you spend almost a billion shillings refurbishing an important health facility and then keep it under lock and key for two years, condemning nearly 100,000 people to a life of woe? This is what Tororo District authorities have done on the unconvincing ground they are unable to raise Shs35 million to pay off the land owner.
Katajula Health Centre III was once a grade II facility but with support from the Global Financing Facility and International development Agency it was upgraded. The plan was for it to help decongest the more established Nagongera Health Centre IV located seven kilometres away. But that plan remains a pipe dream, along with hopes it would provide a valuable service to pregnant mothers.
It is most irresponsible that the centre cannot be commissioned because the land was not fully paid for. One wonders whether it is actually true that the Shs800 million never covered the land.
With its new maternity ward, Katajula III would bring huge relief to child-bearing women, some of whom told horror stories to our reporter of being delivered to Nagongera in wheelbarrows in the dead of the night. Some never survived the ordeal, becoming an avoidable statistic in Uganda’s maternal mortality record books.
According to the 2022 Uganda Demographic Health Survey, the Maternal Mortality Ratio reduced from 336 to 189 per 100,000 live births. While the reduction is notable, the number of mothers dying in childbirth is still unacceptably high, and especially where it would be preventable.
The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals’ target is to reduce maternal mortality to below 70 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births within the next six years. So, as a country we are playing catch-up.
True, the Health ministry and a range of private sector partners have initiatives in place to improve access to pre-natal and postpartum care for mothers. Among those initiatives are commendable efforts to eradicate the scourge of so-called ‘Traditional Birth Attendants’ (TBAs).
The government banned TBAs in 2010, correctly arguing they cannot handle haemorrhaging in women, which available data shows is the leading cause of maternal deaths in Uganda. It is well known that TBAs work in unsanitary conditions, which can cause life-threatening infections, and they also cannot handle complications occurring during child birth.
A report released by the United Nations Maternal Mortality Estimation Inter-Agency Group revealed the startling finding that between 2000 and 2020, at least 800 women died in Uganda daily from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth – “meaning that a woman dies around every two minutes”.
Katajula’s new maternity ward was supposed to alleviate this tragic circumstance. But it is left to lie idle where it is most needed. This is a scandal which should immediately interest the Health ministry.
