'Understaffing crippling health service delivery in Ibanda'

IBANDA - It is common to hear people complaining about poor services in government health facilities in Ibanda district. Some medical workers have also been accused by patients and the general public of negligence and poor customer care. 

However, the challenge seems to be larger than meets the eye, officials say.

According to Ibanda district health officer (DHO) Dr Julius Bamwine, the department is facing a big challenge of understaffing, overstretching medical personnel in public health facilities and, hence, the resulting complaints from patients and caregivers over poor services.

The DHO says the department is at just 40% staffing level of all its medical personnel needs. This challenge, he adds, emanates from inadequate funds allocated to the district health department’s wage bill by the central government.

Bamwine says the department received over shillings 6.1billion to cater for salaries this fiscal year, compared to over 15 billion required to cater for its staffing needs. This indicates an over nine billion funding gap, he said during the district budget conference on October 30, 2025.

“Patients wait for long to be attended to by the few medics because of the big numbers. Also, health workers suffer from work overload burnout, leading to absenteeism or poor service delivery,” he explained, adding that the department urgently needs additional staff.

At least, if the Government can increase the funding by shillings two billion to recruit more staff, this would help ease the situation, he said.

He explained that the most affected were health centres II and III, with the two HCS IV Ruhoko in Ibanda Municipality and Ishongororo in Ibanda North County, fairly staffed.

The staffing gaps cut across all areas, with more nurses, midwives, lab staff and doctors required, among others.

According to Ibanda district deputy chief administrative officer Robinah Tumwebaze, inadequate functionality of health centres and poor health service delivery are among the challenges the district faces.

The district has been performing well on the health indicator in the annual local government service delivery assessment under the Prime Minister’s office despite such challenges. It has ranked among the top three overall for the past three years.

The budget conference is the first step in the annual budget-making process.

The district’s current fiscal year budget is nearly sh36.4 billion, higher than next financial year’s planning figure of over Shillings 35.52 billion.