Systematic Corruption in Uganda's Health Care System
For most Ugandans, the fact that $300 million dollars are lost to corruption every year (as estimated by the World Bank) is felt in every social service which is underfunded. Medicines lost to corruption mean that HIV and AIDS patients go hungry AND go without medicine. There is currently a shortage of anti-retroviral AIDS medicines in the country.Uganda’s corruption became legendary when government officials stole funds from the Global Health Fund, which had been put in place to bypass corrupt governments.
Uganda unmasked: Where has the aid gone?
For most of the nearly one quarter of a century the NRM have been here, Uganda has enjoyed a reputation, manufactured by the donor community and other members of the aid industry and, save for a few exceptions, largely unquestioned by analysts, of being “a rare African success story”. The country has been touted as a case study not only of how to fight HIV/Aids, but also of post-conflict reconstruction, political and economic reform, and a testament to the good development aid can do in Africa.
Some poverty experts, local and foreign, have routinely brandished statistical ‘evidence’ to show that, outside the war-affected north, levels of poverty in Uganda have fallen considerably.
This despite the massive levels of deprivation that literally hit you in the face as you travel deep into remote rural areas around the country.
At the heart of the gap between the image painted by statistics and the reality one observes on the ground, are differences in method of analysis. But let me not bore you with technical jargon.
One of the big stories of the last few days has been the unmasking of ‘Uganda, the success story’ of development aid. The culprit is a Sierra Leonean journalist, one Sorious Samura.
In a hard-hitting documentary, “Addicted to Aid”, which was broadcast on the BBC’s award-winning programme, Panorama last Monday, Mr Samura travels from his own country where colossal amounts of aid money have disappeared without trace, to Uganda. Presumably he had come to learn from Uganda’s positive experience. If that is indeed what he had expected, he would have departed with more disturbing questions.
His first impression, though, was uplifting enough, as he discovered that vast numbers of schools and health clinics have been built over the years, and that “almost every Ugandan child has a place in primary school”. But that is as far as the good news went.
Soon enough he discovered that six out of ten children in primary school are unable to read or write, and that many of their teachers are nowhere to be seen during teaching hours. It was time to check on the health facilities to find out if things were any better in the health sector.
Accompanied by local journalist, Andrew Mwenda, arguably Uganda’s foremost critic of the aid business, Mr Samoura made unannounced visits to a number of clinics.
His discovery would have surprised few locals: no medicines, not even for malaria, a disease widely acknowledged as one of the biggest killers of this country’s citizens.
At Mulago Hospital he was greeted by filthy wards, over-crowding, and medical staff complaining of struggling “to get even the most basic supplies”, among them, gloves.
To round off his visit, he called at the Ministry of Health headquarters where he discovered that much of “over half a billion dollars” donors have injected into the health sector” is being “spent on just other things”, among them hundreds of 4×4 vehicles for senior staff, while Mulago struggles with only four ambulances.
I was visiting the University of Manchester’s Institute for Development Policy & Management when the documentary was aired. There, poverty and aid are daily preoccupations among faculty staff and students, and programmes of this kind do not pass unnoticed. Mr Samura has just made a huge dent in Uganda’s image.
Among the questions I had to answer, one stands out: “what’s going on there with your Museveni?”
In an attempt to reverse the damage, the Permanent Secretary at Health, Mary Nannono, released a statement pointing out how Uganda has been through “a difficult patch” since the 1960s, which “has severely affected its social, economic as well as political fibre”.
As for the filth in Mulago and elsewhere, “levels of sanitation are generally poor, even outside hospitals. The hospital clients belong to the same population”. Brilliant; isn’t it?
fgmutebi@yahoo.com
ttp://www.monitor.co.ug/artman/publish/Golooba-Mutebi/Uganda_unmasked_Where_has_the_aid_gone_75954.shtml
