Prime
Review laws governing private health facilities
The minister of Health, Dr Jane Ruth Aceng
What you need to know:
The issue:
Private hospitals.
Our view:
As we talk about decisive action to put a cap to what they can charge, we should also be looking at reviewing the laws that govern the private health facilities.
The promise that private medical facilities made in June during meetings with the head of the State House Anti-Corruption Unit, Col Edith Nakalema, and later with the Prime Minister, Ms Robinah Nabbanja, to review and harmonise daily treatment charges for Covid-19 patients has until now not been fulfilled.
The nation had on Friday expected the minister of Health, Dr Jane Ruth Aceng, to in her update on the status of the pandemic, to reveal what the back and forth meetings between government and the proprietors and managers of the private facilities had arrived at, but the minister instead regurgitated what the public has always known - that “the Ministry of Health has engaged the owners of the private health facilities to review the cost drivers of treatment in order to reduce the costs”.
That was not very useful information at a time when the public has already cried itself hoarse over the out-of-the-roof charges that private health facilities have been compelling patients requiring critical care to pay.
Last week, Ms Grace Ssali Kiwanuka, the executive director of Uganda Health Care Federation, the umbrella body for private players in health sector, tried to justify the exorbitant charges that the facilities are charging on grounds that Covid-19 patients stay in Intensive Care Units (ICUs) for more than 10 days and that the medicines and personnel required to care for patients in ICUs also drive the charges up.
What sort of medicines are we talking about? Former president of the Uganda Medical Association, Dr Ekwaro Obuku, recommends high dose of Vitamin C, Zinc, Azithromycin and Dexamethasone.
Harvard Medical School lists some of the drugs used in the treatment of Covid-19 as Dexamethasone, Remdesivir, Baricitinib, and blood thinners like enoxaparin.
A comparison between what the private facilities charge for those drugs and what they will cost you when you pick them from the next pharmacy will leave you in no doubt that these private facilities are driven by nothing, but greed.
The failure by the ministry to rein in these facilities points to serious flaws in the regulatory framework governing the facilities. It would appear that those who came up with the laws governing these private health facilities did not take public health objectives into consideration.
So as we talk about decisive action to put a cap to what they can charge, we should also be looking at reviewing the laws that govern the private health facilities.
