In the absence of health care, provide for medical check-up

More missery at Mulago as the national referral hospital is unable to handle most patients

Those who own no homes of their own, have to somehow find money for education.

As we struggle for food and shelter, there is another inevitability – we fall sick. Problem here, is that health-care in Uganda is very expensive. Unfortunately, the government of Uganda does not provide universal health care for its people.

When you fall sick, you are literally on your own. The only assistance from government is it provides hospitals and health centers where a sick person can go for help if they are lucky to find a doctor. Sadly, these health facilities don’t provide free medicine. So even if you find a doctor, and they are in short supply unless they are needed for export, the patient has to buy the prescribed medicines.

Now, for many Ugandans, the cost of medical care is beyond them because of lack of money. As a result, many people will inevitably die when they fall sick and they can’t afford to pay for their care. But even for those who have paying jobs, there are many ailments whose cost is too expensive to afford on their own.

In the recent past, we have witnessed a culture of fundraising in order to save a life. But even when fundraising has been successful, often times it has come too late to save life because Africans, especially Ugandans have no culture of medical check-up unless they are really very sick.

Of recent we have been gripped with shock and fear following the increasing rate at which our people especially young people, have been dying from unexplainable situations. They get unwell and before you understand it they are dead.

In most of these deaths, the obvious has emerged: victims get to know the seriousness of their sickness when it is too late to be saved. That is why we are of strong opinion that, if the government has been unable to provide us with health-care, at the basic health-care, cant and shouldn’t it at least make it possible for Ugandans to have regular free medical check-ups so that if  I find I have a condition that needs urgent attention, I am able to run around and seek life-saving help from relatives, friends or well-wishers who by the way have shown they are more responsible than government.

The government has proved its inability to provide services it is mandated to provide to its citizens. It can’t surely be a crime to demand that the government provides centres where the people of Uganda can go and they get medically checked for the sake of saving lives of our people whom this country needs for taxes and development.

It pains to see Ugandans, especially young people, dying when they could still be alive if government had done its duty of providing us with medical care. And it’s not doing so. How many Ugandans have to die for us to demand that these avoidable deaths be stopped? We can’t even maintain One Referral hospital when other countries manage hundreds of such facilities. It’s a shame.

Finally, in the event that the government finds it its heart and decides to provide check-up mechanisms, the ministry of health should not ask everyone to go to Mulago cancer institute for check-up but to make community-based arrangements where Ugandans can easily go and get the service. We are sure this is possible if the ministry of health chooses to save us.

Comments

comments