By
AKAMPA Tanbull
Well, in the the year 2019 I picked more interest in how our public health centres and hospitals offer services and how they can be improved to offer better services to both the poor and the rich.
This happened when one of my cousins got complications after being operated on some where in Luwero from a private clinic and then later on her case was mis handled further in a Government health facility and her condition got worsened, she was brought to Kiruddu Hospital and finally transferred to Mulago where she recovered from.
Yes, my aunt had already spent lots of money in the private clinic, they kept on milking her and yet the situation of her daughter was not getting any better day by day.
The woman would call us weeping until we advised her that it would be better to bring this girl to Mulago Hospital being a Government hospital, the rates would not be so high and she still feared because all her money had gone and nothing had changed, she had lost hope in her daughter!
Matters worsened and instead of directly bringing the girl to Mulago National Referral hospital, they instead took her to Kiruddu Hospital of Kawempe where she spent a week until we requested for transfer to main Mulago now.
Off course we fund raised to save the life of this young girl, she was in the national hospital for almost two months.
Yes, she was attended to by the Doctors and Nurses at Mulago, even when we had to buy most of the medicines from outside the hospital, what was important was to have her life again. She finally recovered!
Why did I start with the story of my cousin? If we did not fund raise for her, we would have lost her life but at the same time it is crystal clear that the poor die while trying to access health services which are damn expensive, especially the private clinics and Government health centres would be ideal but drugs stock outs are order of the day or even in some health facilities the nurses and doctors are hardly available to attend to patients who have no money to give to them in one way or the other.
You find that the sanitation and hygiene in many of these health centres is so wanting.
This whole picture changed when I visited KCCA's City Clinic, it is really being run by organized patriotic Ugandans, there is a system to follow and check in and check out even when they are currently overwhelmed by COVID-19 vaccination to the extent that they receive between 400 to 600 clients every day!
This is too much and overwhelming but the staff here has persistently continued to offer services. I was attended too very well by the lady consultant who spoke humanly, went to the lab, same reception!
The clinic is really clean and organized, even the washrooms.
What makes KCCA city clinic better and more organized than other public hospitals or health centres? Is it the management? Staff? Or because it happens to be nearer the Lord Mayor's parlour or the office of the Executive Director KCCA?
Why are many other government health facilities not as serious as this KCCA city Clinic?
These are the questions I am still looking answers and will write in my next investigative article on why we need medical insurance for all adult Ugandans to increase or improve on Universal health coverage.
And why Government can not manage to offer free health services or medicines to all Ugandans?!
But I implore all other Government health facilities to come to KCCA City Clinic and bench mark on how to best offer health services to Ugandan Citizens, this would reduce on the rate at which private clinics and hospitals over exploit poor Ugandans.
KUDOs to the staff, Management and the leadership at KCCA.
*AKAMPA Tanbull*
akampabi@gmail.com
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