How to improve our healthcare system

Sixty-three-year-old Margret Iloku from Soroti City made it to the news this week when her story of weeding a nurse’s garden as payment for healthcare services at Princess Diana Health Centre IV in Soroti City was published.

For  Iloku’s daughter to have cesarean section,  she was told to deposit Shs300,000 before the operation could proceed. Iloku had no money, prompting the medics to delay the operation. She later managed to raise only Shs130,000 after making several calls back home.  The garden work was to offset the balance.

According to our story (Mother, 63, spends two weeks weeding nurses’ garden to clear daughter’s medical bills-Daily Monitor of April 25), Ilolu isn’t alone in the struggle for health services at this health centre. Many other inpatient attendants who fail to pay for the service end up in the gardens of health workers in the facility.

Dr Alfred Anyonga, the officer in-charge of Princess Diana Health Centre IV, said he is not aware of the charges at the facility except in situations where the anaesthetists are not available.

The centre has reportedly been on the spot over extortion by the staff for some time.

This story elicited sympathy for IIoku and hate for the nurse and her colleagues who are being accused of extortion.  Words like shameless, merciless, evil were thrown around and rightfully so. It is a sad state of affairs and would elicit all manner of emotion. Even our legislators joined the fray with the Speaker of Parliament ordering details on the case in question.  The public outrage and outcry are only natural and a sane way to respond to this kind of news but emotions aside, have we invested enough (and not only in monetary terms) in our healthcare to be this angry? So after this outrage and probable investigation and maybe arrest of said nurses, will healthcare services improve or will the vice be snuffed out at one health centre only to be channeled in another location?

Can the powers that be channel their anger into fighting for appropriation of the right tools and funds to our healthcare and healthcare providers? Poor service delivery can’t be justified by poor or lack of pay but neither can the correlation between the two be ignored. Grand speeches peppered by anguish at culprits and social media posts that amount to no or little long-term action don’t improve the lives of those who suffer the atrocities occasioned by an ailing healthcare system.

 There are so many llokus out there, most not lucky enough to have their plight captured by the media. Well, now that the powers that be are outraged, what long-term, multi-pronged realistic solutions are in the works