Health professionals hire out licences to quacks

A health practitioner at Arua Regional Referral Hospital dispenses drugs recently. The health professionals are in danger of losing their credibility as there is laxity in regulating their activities. PHOTO BY CLEMENT ALUMA

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The Allied Health Professionals Council says many health facilities in the country operate under genuine licenses but with unqualified personnel.

Health professionals are to blame for the mushrooming health facilities in the country which are operated by unqualified personnel, an official at the Allied Health Professionals Council (AHPC) has revealed.

AHPC is an association of health workers of different abilities such as dispensers, dental officers and radiographers, medical laboratory technologists, ophthalmic clinical officers, anaesthetics officers, among others.

The AHPC registrar, Mr Patrick Mpiima, told a meeting of the health professionals in Arua District that they had discovered that many health facilities in the country operate under genuine licences but with unqualified personnel.

“We have sold our profession to the unprofessional, we hire out our licenses to unqualified people and that is why the communities are now used to those who are not qualified because they are with them every time,” Mr Mpiima said at the weekend.

The revelation comes after AHPC officials closed 28 illegal clinics and drug shops in West Nile and impounded their medicine in an operation. Majority of the clinics allegedly lacked operational licences while others had forged operational and practicing certificates.

It is these illegal facilities that Mr Mpiima said were responsible for unethical practices in the medical field and selling government drugs. Only 69 clinics are licensed in the eight districts of West Nile while the rest operate illegally.

Mr Daniel Nduatre, a village health team member in Pajulu Sub-county, said non-health professionals were responsible for majority of abortions in his area.