By Swalley Kenyi

ISRAEL has offered to donate ambulances to health centres countrywide as their contribution towards  improving the health sector in Uganda.

New Israel Ambassador to Uganda Gil Haskel disclosed the offer while he paid a courtesy call on the Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi on Friday.

Haskel said that his country was willing to strengthen cooperation with Uganda in several areas of health and agricultural modernisation and especially in fisheries and dairy farming.

The offer of ambulances follows the revival of the Protocol the two countries signed in 1968. The protocol involved Israeli investing in Uganda, exchange programmes in military affairs, education and agriculture.

The Israeli government last month donated equipment for building a new trauma centre at Mulago Referral Hospital. It was a fulfillment of a pledge by the country’s Foreign Affairs Minister in 2009.

If completed, the centre which is the first of its kind in Uganda will address cases of acid attacks, accident, severe burns, domestic violence victims. These are some of the rampant cases registered at the casualty ward in Mulago today.

Haskel said construction of the Trauma and Emergency Ward is about to be completed and it would be handover in April.  Mulago trauma centre registers up to 120 emergency cases daily.

Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi hailed Israel where there is hardly any grass for her modern methods of dairy farming. Cows in Israel yield between 40 and 50 litres of milk daily compared to Uganda’s 20 litres.