A pro-active approach will guarantee better healthcare for Ugandans

Concerted input into a pro-active approach will guarantee better healthcare for Ugandans
In the past week, I was watching television when I saw a story of young medical interns who dropped their day's duties to advocate for their stipend.

This activism came at a time when the unemployment milieu has dwindled most of the youths' hope for a decent future. The young interns are among the 320, a figure of medical students who graduate from our universities. Without such incentives, our lifeblood will be among the many physicians who are coerced to moonlight where they can be well appreciated (especially in the diaspora or in private hospitals).

Furious as it may seem to be, the current debate on the mayhem within health service that triggered the young medical interns to join arms is very relevant to charting a path for better health for every Ugandan in our country.

While the sector budget financing struggles to meet the 15% of the 2000 Abuja declaration, Uganda has focused most of its bulk of the meagre healthcare trillions and energy combating diseases and problems in expensive services when one has been sick and brought to hospital. That is because a lot of money is squandered in what perhaps is not needed for a good, affordable medical system.

This disguise painted therein, given the economy that our country upholds, has become a blessing to mulching private health insurance providers. The impact on the Ugandans is such that the poor get sicker since they cannot access high technology and modern treatment.

I am also inclined to believe that profit maximization in health has protracted the creation of illnesses, whereas hospitalization has focused on contagion and diseases. With such a response treatment mechanism, most preventable NCDs including malaria and HIV/AIDs will always be a mainstay for Uganda's top preventable morbidity and mortality registering millions of cases annually.

While the central authorities convene their efforts to make a functional and equipped healthcare system, less input has been concerted to improve the prevention-focused research, health literacy and education. Additionally, ignoring health human resource affects the delivery of preventive health care information and services.

Yes, one may argue that there is hardly enough in the health coffers to effectively control everyday health issues. My point here is that attention is should paid to programs that focus on preventing people from getting infected rather than curing them after they have fallen sick.

Such preventive programs can allow the integration of health infrastructure from the highest tier (the central planners) to the lowest tier (the village health centres). In case of emergencies, or any disease outbreaks, the interconnectedness can allow the health system to proactively respond well before it becomes a crisis. I know that the preventive programs can realistically help improve Uganda's health because; One.

Ugandans do not need to access high modern and expensive technological equipment to maintain good sanitation and hygiene as opposed to medical care. Clearly defined and acceptable messages that outlay the benefits of taking well-balanced nutrition and living health lifestyles can steadily motivate Ugandans themselves to control and at most halt any imaginable widespread of preventable diseases. We also have low cost traditional medicine as an alternative to the dominant costly diagnostic and treatment techniques as one of the response treatment mechanisms. We can embrace this medicine.

Two.  Our physicians as few as they are, can be distributed to be part of the communities where they could work-instead of having all of them concentrated in urban areas. This challenge though is under rooted and intertwined with Uganda's political economy.

This could mean improving in their welfare since they are few (recent statistics indicated that Uganda's doctor to patient ratio is 1:24000). While accessing treatment, the reach out of these few medics to the community people will help them know each other. The community people will guard each other's health and share information on community health. This also will be good for both the concentrated urban and sparse countryside villages. Medics too, will benefit in studying how people are bio-psycho-social beings as they practice modern medicine.

Three. Health prevention programs will improve the political economy of our country. This means that there will economic efficiency and effectiveness to achieve our country's health expectations. The government will spend less on procuring medicine and equipment, while Ugandans will be healthier to realize national productivity. As for the regime in power, I will think that will be a milestone, a good accountability to the electorate when the election period comes.

Lastly, the work of medical workers will be simplified as it will guarantee improved health literacy rates across Uganda. Doctors, nurses/midwives and VHTs will find it most fulfilling performing checkups, administering treatment to a smaller number of patients. Definitely, the doctor to patient ratio will be reduced as fewer cases on illness will be reported.

I believe preventive programs can redesign own health care systems. They can used by everyone to meet the needs of our country's poor. I do not think Uganda needs to break the bank or use hi-tech technology to improve the quality of people's lives.

On the contrary, focusing on simpler prevention programs will make health easily accessible, acceptable and affordable for all, without exclusion. The most interesting bit is that with prevention, the people themselves will be incited to participate, detect and fighting lifelong illnesses early by nipping them in the bud before they get out of control.
Ronald Twinamasiko
Email: tumwine19@gmail.com