Patient retention at health centres is illegal

Patients in a hospital ward

What you need to know:

  • Patients wary of humiliation have delayed to seek or do not seek timely care at all.
  • Patient detention retrogresses successes Uganda’s health sector.

Except ‘for the purpose of preventing the spread of an infectious or contagious disease’, no person shall be deprived of personal liberty as stated in Article 23 clause 1 paragraph (d) of the supreme law of Uganda [1995 Constitution]. As such, healthcare service providers cannot detain patients or bodies unchecked.
What a provocation it is for citizens to be chained to hospital beds, guards hired or expensive security equipment purchased not to keep the hospital secure but to harass or detain patients?

When will it occur to Uganda Human Rights Commission, Uganda Police Force, health providers licensing and regulatory bodies and Parliament to condemn or call to order these health providers? Is it not about time these facilities actualised the Patient Rights Charter, which ministry of Health adopted in October 2009? Parliament must fast-track the enactment of the Patient Rights and Responsibilities Bill and the National Health Insurance Scheme Bill which I am sure shall take away this impunity.

Hospital administrators violate all rules of natural justice when they persecute patients who fail to pay bills. They play prosecutor and judge as they give sentence and then oversee serving of the sentence. This has no place in contemporary Uganda no matter the excuses advanced by healthcare providers.
Shouldn’t health rights activists rebuke health services providers for detaining patients as a means of enforcing payment? The Patient Rights and Responsibilities Bill moblises patients to meet reasonably priced private health sector. Catastrophic health expenditure has kept many a patient away.
Does the law provide a remedy for health providers faced with this challenge? Are there other means besides court process for health providers to use which are not illegal or are health providers simply afraid of the delays associated with court processes?

Patients wary of humiliation have delayed to seek or do not seek timely care at all. Patient abandonment at facilities has doubled, self-medication has risen, many people now seek healthcare from unqualified people, buy expired drugs, are treated without diagnosis, and use out dated medical equipment to mention but a few to avoid being retained in health centres due to non-payment.
Patient detention retrogresses successes Uganda’s health sector.
Moses Talibita,
Uganda National Health
Consumers’ Organisation