COVID-19: Health Ministry plans to turn Namboole Stadium into health facility

The Ministry of Health is planning to turn Mandela National Stadium (Namboole) into a health facility if the number of COVID-19 cases increase.

This was revealed on Wednesday by Dr Diana Atwine, the health ministry’s Permanent Secretary while appearing before the parliamentary committee on the budget.
The committee was scrutinizing a supplementary request by government of Shs284b to mitigate the effects of the pandemic.

Dr Atwine, was responding to questions from Members of Parliament in regard to the ministry’s preparedness to handle the cases if at all they increase. She said that at the moment, the cases are being handled from Entebbe Grade B hospital and Mulago national referral hospital.

Dr Atwine, however, told the committee that arrangements are already being made to have the stadium gazzetted in case the two facilities get filled up.

“In case Mulago has a spill over, we shall use Namboole, we have a mobile hospital that we can put there and operationalize, right now I can’t tell but we shall handle as we go along,” she said.

Several countries like the USA, Italy, China and Spain among others that have been terribly hit by the pandemic are currently suffering from lack of hospital space, ventilators and protective gears.

Some countries have made makeshift health facilities, while others are constructing more hospitals to handle the coronavirus situation.
Coronavirus cases worldwide have now soared to 883,000 with up to 43,500 deaths. 185, 000 people have recovered so far.

In East Africa alone, a total of 229 cases have so far been confirmed as of April 2, 2020, Uganda alone has 44 cases.