The Secretary to the Treasury, Ramathan Ggoobi has asked Parliament to consider the proposal of funding Uganda’s health sector, instead of allocating funds for medical treatment to top Government officials abroad.
Ggoobi made the remarks while appearing before Parliament’s Budget Committee. However, Kira Municipality MP, Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda, reminded him that Parliament did that by allocating money to Lubowa Specialised hospital remarking, “we gave that money to Lubowa, what happened?”
Ggoobi, however, didn’t address Ssemujju’s remarks on Lubowa hospital and instead defended his proposal.
He explained, “I am putting a very clear statement, the money which goes abroad, why don’t we use it to improve our systems and because I have seen many Ugandans who live longest and we are all treated here, in other words, the system isn’t bad but sometimes I think people go abroad for other reasons, we need to also address these issues.”
The government through parliament guaranteed a loan for construction of the specialized hospital that would consist of a 264-bed hospital, an 82-room budget hotel, a 5000-seater conference hall, a health training school and staff housing to be established on the 85,000 square meters of land.
The facilities were estimated to cost $249.9m (over sh926b) including medicines for one year and training of Ugandan health professionals.
There was also an additional $129.81m (over sh481b) cost representing interest rate of 6.49% on the loan to be secured by the project’s joint venture contractors; FINASI and ROKO. This brought the total cost to $379.71m (over sh1.4trillion).
Many medical experts have argued that equipping hospitals locally is ideal. They argue that investing in a well-equipped hospital in Uganda would be cheaper than sending government officials for treatment in foreign countries.
It is estimated that the government spends between $100million-$300 million dollars annually on “medical tourism” for VIPs to travel abroad for medical services.
