The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
The government’s target, she says, was to cut on the numbers of women seeking similar services abroad and also attracting patients from elsewhere by offering quality and acting as a one stop center for all specialised women healthcare needs.
She says it shows how far the government has gone to decongest the main national referral hospital at Mulago.
The hospital is not yet officially open though. President Museveni says it will be an Independence gift to women and, therefore, its full operations will be launched in October after a ribbon cutting ceremony. For now it’s ‘community open house’;where individuals are free to take selfies, do self-guided tours, and meet up with specialists at no cost.
The nine storey facility was finished by Arab contractors under a lock and key arrangement where they had to handover works with everything intact – from equipment, to hospital beds and furniture. It sits on 24,000 square meters of land (about 6 acres) on Mulago hill North of Kampala city.
The hospital optimises everything that is modern in a 21st century health service and is being touted as a solution to curbing maternal mortality currently at rate at 430 deaths per 100,000 live births and child mortality currently at 131 per 1000 live births.
The hospital will accommodate 320 beds – 120 beds for high risk antenatal, delivery and postnatal, 45 beds for Gynecological Oncology, 60 beds for Urogynaecology; especially obstetric fistula, 6 theatres, 70 beds in the private wing, and 25 beds for assisted reproductive health services.
“We are running a completely new design,” Nuwamanya says pointing at numerous long gas cylinders and other equipment in what looks like a small factory on the first floor just next to the back entrance. It is equipment to manufacture medical gas, oxygen, and nitrus oxide.
“Gas will be made here,” he says, “Our wards will no longer be congested with oxygen cylinders. Everything will be done here and just connect to the wards.”
The project was largely funded by a loan from the Islamic Development bank and the government contributed $3.4 million. According to the terms given to the contractor, in addition to building, installation of medical and non-medical infrastructure they were also supposed to cater for the training of hospital staff in various specialised maternal and neonatal care skills.
By end of June last year, they had planned to have trained 33 managers and specialists to provide care. Already, according to the Greater Mulago Hospital Executive Director Dr. Byarugaba Baterana, 12 of these have received super-specialised training and are already in the country. The rest are still being trained in India and Egypt. They include specialists in urogynaecology, female pelvic medicine, reconstructive surgery, and perinatology; which involves handling pregnancy complications.
The plan was to have the work, which started in June 2015, end two years later in June 2017. The delay of about a year resulted from the government’s delay to release its portion of the money.
‘More money needed’
And now, Aceng says, they need more money for the hospital to start operations.
“To fullyoperationalise the hospital, we need Shs44billion,” she told The Independent. In the budget, the hospital was allocated Shs8billion or just 18% of what is required. Even then, it was clawed from money supposed to go to the main Mulago. Hope for the hospital now lies on raising money from paying patients.
Unlike other public hospitals in the country where there is free access to care and one can walk in even without a referral note from lower facilities, the women’s hospital will be run strictly on referral basis and on arrival a patient will be asked to present their national identity cards and pay a consultation fee of Shs50, 000 whenever they visit.
