Residents want Mukono Health Centre IV elevated to hospital

Some of the patients waiting to be attended to at Mukono Health Centre IV recently. PHOTO BY FRED MUZAALE

MUKONO- Mukono Municipality authorities have made a passionate plea to the government to elevate Mukono Health Centre IV to a general hospital status.
This is in response to the overwhelming number of patients seeking services at the health facility, which is located in Mukono Town.

The officer in-charge of the health unit, Dr Geoffrey Kasirye, says the demand to have the health centre elevated to a general hospital started five years ago but government has not approved the proposal.

Dr Kasirye says in 2013, they applied to the Health ministry to have the health centre upgraded and in 2015, President Museveni performed the groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of the hospital, but to their dismay, nothing has materialised.
The health facility according to Dr Kasirye, attends to at least 200 outpatients daily. In 2016, Mukono Health Centre IV handled 6,322 deliveries and 1,500 caesarean sections.

“If you compare the performance of Mukono Health Centre IV to other hospitals in the 2016 annual health sector performance report, Kayunga hospital handled 3,280 deliveries, 627 caesarian sections, while Iganga hospital handled 9,053 deliveries and 1,950 caesarean sections in the same year,” Dr Kasirye said during a recent interview.
He attributes the overwhelming number of patients at the facility to its strategic location on Kampala-Jinja highway, which makes it easy to be accessed by patients from the neighbouring districts of Wakiso, Buikwe and Kayunga.
“Because this is a public health facility, we can’t chase away patients, so we end up attending to patients we are not supposed to attend to,” Dr Kasirye says.
When Buikwe District was carved out of Mukono District in 2000, the latter remained without a general hospital after Kawolo Hospital was taken by Buikwe District. Currently Mukono District has one hospital, St Francis Naggalama hospital, located in Nakifuma County and is owned by the Catholic Church.
Mukono Municipality principal medical officer, Dr Anthony Kkonde, says the projected annual budget for buying drugs for the health centre is Shs300m, however, they receive only Shs100m from the government annually. This, Dr Kkonde says, has forced them to ask patients to buy some drugs from nearby private clinics.
“It is a disappointment that we have met most of the requirements to 70 per cent as set by the Health ministry to have this centre elevated to a hospital. The meagre resources we have are overstretched by the big number of patients,” he says.

When contacted, the Minister of State for Health in charge of General Duties, Ms Sarah Opendi, said they are aware of the challenges health workers and patients at Mukono Health Centre IV go through but said limited funds are delaying their plan to have the facility upgraded to a hospital.
“We shall upgrade it when funds are available, but we do this in a prioritised manner because there are districts such as Kalangala that lack health centres,” Ms Opendi said in a telephone interview with this reporter.