Museveni’s unfulfilled health promises

Malaria, a preventable disease, continues kill more than 320 Ugandans daily—especially women and children. While Uganda, once regarded as a success story in the fight against HIV/Aids, owing to the political will dedicated to the fight, the country appears to be losing the war against the scourge. Museveni’s ABC has helped reduce AIDS prevalence from 30 per cent in the early 1990s to about 7 per cent, but infections are increasing today especially among married couples.

But Mr Museveni insists, over 75,000 people are receiving Antiretroviral (ARV) treatment. All districts currently have the capacity to deliver Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) services with 846 health workers trained on administration of PMTCT which involves giving pregnant women a single dose of Nevirapine.
Slow growth
President Museveni’s promise to introduce a mandatory Social Health Insurance scheme, in order to protect Ugandans has been a non-occurence after it was rejected by Ugandans.

The scheme sought to protect the formal and informal sector workers against expenditure on medical treatment by having them contribute alongside their employers to a national public insurance pool. But the impracticability of this proposal soon had it shelved.

It had been suggested that by paying monthly premiums when employees or members of their families fell sick they would simply turn up at a public hospital and get attention. However, the reality of the hopeless situation in public hospitals soon had government abandoning the policy, pending further consultations.
Now while empty promises could be viewed as a ‘small matter’ by some ruling party members, each broken promise could be used by the opposition in the 2011 general elections.

The aspiring Secretary General of the ruling NRM party, Mr Theodore Ssekikubo (Lwemiyaga), said the government has been forced to back off on some promises because of what he described as “unique circumstances” such as the effects of the global economic meltdown of 2009. Mr Ssekikubo did not explain what happened in the two years preceding the worldwide credit crisis.

“There have been some achievements even as we faced the financial crisis and this should be appreciated,” Mr Ssekikubo said.