Employ more doctors in public facilities

Employ more doctors in public facilities

What you need to know:

  • Uganda risk losing the unemployed doctors to other countries yet the country uses a lot of resources to train these doctors.

Fellow countrymen, the health workforce is one of the building blocks of functioning public health system. In sub-Saharan Africa, however, most public health facilities have inadequate doctors to offer quality health services to the public.
Uganda still has an acute shortage of doctors in the public health service. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the recommended doctor to patient ratio is 1:1000, which means that Uganda needs at least 40,000 doctors for its estimated 40 million people.

However, the approved positions for doctors in Uganda Public Service is 1,200 and yet these are not 100 per cent filled. Actually, Uganda employs just slightly above 1,000 doctors in its public health facilities, according to Health Sector Annual Performance Report 2017/2018.
Each doctor in a public health facility takes care of about 33,473 people. The few doctors employed in public health facilities cannot meet the demands of the Uganda population, hence compromising health service delivery.

It is possible to employ more doctors in Uganda because the doctors willing to work in public service are available and the number is increasing every year since several medical schools churn out about 400 doctors every year. Gone are the days when government used to give excuses of unavailability of doctors. Almost every hospital and health centre IV has a volunteering doctor, which is a positive sign that they are willing to work in public health facilities if formally employed by government.

Uganda risk losing the unemployed doctors to other countries yet the country uses a lot of resources to train these doctors. Uganda spends about Shs70 million on training a single doctor, so for every doctor we lose to another country, Uganda is donating about Shs70 million to that country indirectly. There is no reason why government should train doctors for other countries benefit yet it has not met the demands of its population.

There is need to increase the number of doctors in public health facilities in order to meet the growing demands for their services. I, therefore, call upon the Ministry of Health to employ more doctors in public service and prevent the wastage of resources that the government has used to train these doctors.
Dr Edward Muwanga
Kyotera
0782724077/0706729827
[email protected]