President Yoweri Museveni has been highly commended for his efforts in improving Uganda's health sector especially the welfare of the medical fraternity.

The President was applauded by a delegation from Uganda Medical Association (UMA) led by their president, Dr Samuel Odongo Oledo. 

“We thank you Your Excellency for the salary enhancement of the health workforce with the least paid being an enrolled nurse at certificate level who now earns sh1.4 million from sh600,000 and the interns from sh700,000 to sh2,500,000,” said Dr. Oledo.

Dr. Samuel Odongo Oledo, the president of the Uganda Medical Association (UMA). (PPU photo)

He made the remarks on Tuesday during a meeting with President Museveni at State House Entebbe where he led a delegation of health workers.

Dr Oledo also thanked Gen. Museveni for upgrading the General Hospitals to Regional Referral Hospitals and equipping the health facilities with Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds and CT scans.

On leading a delegation of health practitioners to meet President Yoweri Museveni, Dr Oledo clarified that the meeting had been requested for before the saga within the association, to discuss with the President the issues of deployment of doctors, the recruitment of workers and to improve the health sector as a whole which is now ongoing in the country.

Dr Oledo added that the meeting also reviewed some of the pledges made by President Museveni, citing the boosting of the health workers SACCO with sh4 billion and to brief the President on the milestone the Medical Association has so far registered.

“Doctors should be happy that they will now have great transformation in the health sector,” Dr Oledo observed.

The president of the UMA, therefore, called on the medical fraternity to render selfless service to wanainchi and avoid having the mindset of extorting money from patients as well as harassing them instead of applying the physio-social support needed by patients.

He urged doctors and all health workers to surrender themselves to the profession they subscribe to.

President Yoweri Museveni poses for a group photograph with the Uganda Medical Association (UMA) president Dr Samuel Oledo together with his delegation. (PPU photo)

“Surely let’s give ourselves to the profession we subscribe to,” he urged.

Uganda Medical Association which was established in 1964 is a registered non-government professional organization that brings together all the qualified and duly registered medical doctors in Uganda. The association boasts of a membership of 5,000 health workers in Uganda and 3,000 in the diaspora.