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The Minister of Health, Dr Jane Ruth Aceng, has asked Ugandan surgeons to start advertising their work like their counterparts in other countries.

Aceng made the call on Tuesday (March 26, 2024) during the second Association of Surgeons of Uganda (ASOU) landscape exhibition held at Kololo Independence Grounds.

In her speech, Dr Jane Ruth Aceng, the health minister, urged surgeons to publicise the kind of surgeries they have done and what they are doing because the kind of surgeries they are carrying out these days are top-notch and unique.

“You need to open the eyes of Ugandans to what we are capable of doing and show them the lives you have saved. When you go to London, you find doctors advertising their services on their hospital walls. But there is nothing on the Mulago hall, you carried out a very complicated surgery and kept quiet.  Lay down that colonial spirit of not advertising and speak out. How will my grandmother know that Ugandan surgeons can do an open-heart surgery,” Dr Aceng said.

She advised the surgeons to make documentaries and spread the good news because other medics from the region do not know what surgeons in Kampala are capable of.

Uganda has over 700 doctors specializing in the different fields of medicine with 237 in surgical disciplines.

From the technology shown at the exhibition, it was clear that Uganda is steadily taking away the need to refer patients abroad and turning the tide to attract patients from beyond Ugandan borders.

Unique surgeries carried out in Uganda

Last year in December, a team of Ugandan and Indian surgeons successfully conducted the country’s first kidney transplant at Mulago Hospital.

In 2022, a group of about 25 specialists at Mulago National Specialised Hospital successfully separated a pair of conjoined twins. For the past three years, the hospital has successfully separated four sets of conjoined twins.

In 2018, Doctors at Uganda Heart Institute at Mulago Hospital conducted the first-ever highly specialised open-heart surgery known as coronary artery bypass grafting surgery.

Coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) is a type of surgery that improves blood flow to the heart.

A team of 14 Ugandan medics conducted the surgery which lasted about 10 hours and involved harvesting veins and arteries from other parts of the body to repair affected blood vessels around the heart muscles.

Cleft surgery done at Comprehensive-Rehabilitation-Services in Uganda (CoRSU) has brought back so many children’s smiles.