Report: Many Ugandans borrowing to afford medical care in hospitals

Uganda like many developing countries continues to struggle to ensure equitable access to primary health care a new study reveals.

The preliminary findings from a 2019 national survey on performance of primary health care in Uganda, reveals that Ugandans in rural areas cannot access health care because of financial constraints, the national health insurance scheme remains the only option.

The survey was conducted by Makerere University School of Public Health in partnership to assess the performance of Primary Health Care captured 4,373 respondents from 398 health facilities.

Dr Nabiwemba Elizabeth, a researcher at Makerere University School of Public Health, reveals that while primary health care is a necessity health facilities lacked water and medicine.

She says that, "We discovered that the health facilities that serve at lower health levels didn’t have water mostly the health centre 2 and 3 at about 70%, and electricity.

The quality of care is also said to be selective with care in health facilities and hospitals in rural areas inadequate.

The principal investigator Wabwire- Mangeni notes, "We found that hospitals and health centre 4 are dedicated to improvement but the lower level ones are not doing much of this."

He attributes the disparity to the fact that, "Some of the managers are not even skilled to handle issues of quality improvement."

This comes amidst financial constrains to the people seeking health care many of whom have been reported to borrow to get medication.

The survey also suggests that the glaring gaps in financing primary health care needs to be addresses.

The World Health Organization has urged all countries to increase spending on primary healthcare by at least one percent of their GDP, so as to close glaring coverage gaps and meet health targets agreed in 2015.

In its latest Universal Health Coverage (UHC) Monitoring Report, the World Health Organization (WHO) warns that the world will have to double health coverage between now and 2030, the deadline world leaders have set for achieving the UHC, otherwise up to 5 billion people will still be unable to access health care by then.