Leaders called upon to improve on monitoring & supervision of the health sector.

The Uganda national roads authority (UNRA) health & safety officer Mr. Kagaba Steven has called for a collective responsibility in the monitoring of health centers in the country as the only way to improve services in the health sector especially government programs/ projects. Mr Kagaba who is also the former Kabarole district health educator (DHE) was hosted live on KRC FM to discuss the existing health policies in Uganda. ToroDev in partnership with KRC FM for the month of December, 2016 will be discussing health as a sector and have identified experienced panelists to discuss the selected topics and these panelists include; district health officer, district health educator, community members, leaders at different levels, etc.

While discussing live on Torodev supported ‘Manya Ekiragiro Kyawe’ program that is aired every Wednesday 8:00pm-10:00pm on  KRC FM, Mr. Kagaba said health management committees have not done their roles as expected together with local leaders in the district of effective monitoring of health centers in the country. On 7^th December, 2016 while in the studios Mr.Kagaba said, management committees supervise drugs availability, access & use, monitors performance of workers and also it is a responsibility of the leaders to see that citizens are getting services whenever they access these health centers. He said once these play their roles of monitoring & supervision, we are likely to see improvement in the health sector. These together with other challenges like drug stock outs, inadequate infrastructure, absenteeism of health workers, etc can be reduced if duty bearers changed their attitudes towards positive development of the sector.

Women waiting for health services at one of the health centers

He called upon health workers, leaders, and health management committees to play their roles well to improve the sector. The VHT which is health center 1 in Uganda, health center 11’s at every parish, health center 111’s at sub county level are supposed to have in-charges whose work is to monitor the drugs that have come in, how they are used, allocation of funds & how it is being used and also are supposed to play a big role of treating minor illnesses in order to avoid congesting referral hospitals.

The two hours live radio discussion had participation of listeners through call-ins & Sms platforms; ‘’our government health centers have totally failed to perform because you can hardly access a service even of minor illnesses like malaria, doctors are not there, nurses work when they want, we are really challenged and not sure of how we are going to improve this sector’’, said Omugurusi Augustine from Kanyambeho in Kabarole district, ‘’the district leadership should avail us with a platform where we as community members will be reporting issues happening in our health centers because we  just see things happening and fail to get where to report, also inspections are not regularly done which makes the services difficult for citizens, please help us’’, said Afande Omani a caller from Buhesi in Kabarole district, ‘’when we visit VHT’s we get drugs that have expired or about to expire, can responsible people look into this issue to save people’s lives please’’, said Julius Mugisa a caller from Kihura in Kyenjojo district.

We are grateful to all our partners SIDA, NED, SPIDER, CIPESA, ICT4DEM  for all kinds of support that have kept our programs on air as we sensitize our citizens.