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Uganda Health Care
Uganda had a total of seventy-nine hospitals in 1989,
providing approximately 20,000 hospital beds. The
government
operated forty-six of these institutions, while
thirty-three were
staffed and equipped by religious and other private
organizations. In addition, more than 600 smaller health
facilities, including community health centers, maternity
clinics, dispensaries, subdispensaries, leprosy centers,
and aid
posts, operated nationwide. At least one hospital was
located in
each district except the southern district of Rakai; the
bestserved districts were Mukono and Mpigi, each with five
hospitals,
and Kampala with seven. In the more sparsely populated
northern
districts, however, people sometimes traveled long
distances to
receive medical care, and facilities were generally
inferior to
those in the south. In 1990 Uganda's entire health care
system
was served by about 700 doctors.
Uganda's per capita spending on health amounted to less
than
US$2 per year for most of the 1980s. This rate of spending
increased slightly in 1989, when the government allocated
US$63
million, roughly 26 percent of its development budget, for
social
services, and US$24 million of this amount for health
services in
particular. This represented an increase of 50 percent
over
health spending for the previous year.
The highest priority in government programs was
rehabilitating existing facilities and improving supplies.
In
1989 funding from the United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP)
and the International Development Association (IDA) was
earmarked
for rehabilitating nineteen of the nation's hospitals,
primarily
through building repairs and upgrading water and
electrical
systems. Primary health-care projects, including
immunization
programs, prescription drugs, clean water supplies, and
public
hygiene, also received special priority. European
Development
Fund (EDF) assistance was also used to construct twenty
new
health centers and one district health office and to train
health-care practitioners.
A number of governmental and nongovernmental
organizations
were involved in health research in the late 1980s, much
of this
sponsored by the Ministry of Health, the Institute of
Public
Health, and Makerere University. The nation's largest
health-care
facility, Mulago Hospital, conducted research on local
nutrition
and endemic diseases, and researchers there developed
child
nutrition programs to be implemented through the United
Nations
Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the Save the Children Fund.
Several government ministries sponsored research and
implemented community programs designed to improve health
and
nutrition. The Ugandan Red Cross and the Ministry of
Health, in
cooperation with several international agencies, opened an
orthopedic workshop in Kampala for handicapped children
and
adults, most of whom had suffered from poliomyelitis or
severe
wounds in outbreaks of violence. Catholic and Protestant
missions, the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of
the UN,
the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and
OXFAM
were also active in emergency relief projects involving
food and
nutrition. Many Ugandans criticized their own government
for
inadequate attention to popular health needs, but they
also hoped
that government efforts to eliminate violence and warfare
would
lay the foundation for improved health care.
Data as of December 1990
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