Focus on current health priorities  for faster recovery of the economy

What you need to know:

  • During the fight against this pandemic, many challenges have been highlighted, including the limited resources, health workforce, among other supplies, namely the personal protective equipment and vaccines. 

Like many other countries worldwide, Uganda has grappled with the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath since 2019. The health sector, amongst others, has suffered the most in several ways. This pandemic exposed not only the strengths of our health system but also its weaknesses.
 
During the fight against this pandemic, many challenges have been highlighted, including the limited resources, health workforce, among other supplies, namely the personal protective equipment and vaccines. 
With this shortage, the government extended a call to its citizens to contribute logistical support as one of the fights against the pandemic. 

Despite the claim of inadequate resources available to support government programmes, MPs continue to engage in self privileged practices at the expense of their constituents, such as the most recent approval of a one-time bulky sum of Shs200m for each of the newly elected 539 MPs, Cabinet and ex officios to purchase brand new cars even when some of them still had official functional vehicles in addition to the ambiguous monthly allowances allocations. 

Not long after that decision, Parliament approved rental office space for occupancy at the Kampala Kingdom building, in the heart of Kampala worth Shs9.8b per year for a whole year. This money was just enough to construct Parliament a permanent workspace.

Furthermore, over Shs50b from the supplementary budget was approved as relief funds for vulnerable Ugandans during the pandemic. The money was meant for those who earned daily but were currently staying home due to the lockdown. More than 500,000 people were expected to benefit from the relief fund, with each beneficiary getting Shs100,000 through mobile money services.  
Although more than 6,000 citizens were estimated to have received money twice, over 8,000 recipients could not be traced in the database of beneficiaries. 

In the face of Covid-19, vaccination has been the scientific mode of reducing disease severity and mortality alongside emphasising other preventive measures such as hand hygiene, wearing masks, and social distancing. However, Uganda has administered at least 3,269,568 doses of donated Covid vaccines from richer countries across the globe, translating to about 3.7percent of the country’s population.  

To date, the healthcare workforce comprising the unsung heroes and heroines in the fight against Covid19 are grieved about their unpaid allowances and are threatening to strike if their concerns are not addressed. This puts the lives of Ugandans seeking healthcare at risk of disease severity and preventable deaths.

Other chronic healthcare challenges are notwithstanding; the education system has been paralysed with students suffocating on unfamiliar online learning strategies disproportionately favouring a few families majorly in urban settings that can afford to purchase data bundles. This is inaccessible and compromised by the 12 percent mandatory taxation on the internet as approved by Parliament.

Such scenarios portray the sub-optimal performance of our legislators and highlight the egocentric nature of the majority of parliamentarians, which further prompts us to examine our MPs’ efforts towards taking Uganda’s crumbling economy, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic period, to middle income status.

We, therefore, demand to see patriotic decision-makers deliberate with sound judgment to better the livelihoods of Ugandan citizens. We urge them to focus and deliver on the national mandate, according to their roles as parliamentarians, namely legislation, oversight, budget approval/appropriation, and holding consultative meetings within their constituents. We challenge them to secure our future and for the generations to come well, knowing that health is wealth.
                
Aidah Nanvuma, Elicana Nduhuura, Jonathan Nkalubo (Members of the Social Medicine Consortium, Uganda Chapter)