Africa-Press – Uganda. The government has been applauded for steps it has taken to improve the health sector. Ms Fatia Kiyange, the executive director of a Civil Society Organisation, Centre for Health, Human Rights and Development, a non-governmental organisation, said Uganda has committed to improve the health sector in terms of maternal health and enhancement of the health budget, among others.
“As part of the periodic review reports from Uganda which were reviewed by the UN Council, in the 50th session in January, we saw our government committing to improving maternal health as one of those commitments, saw it committing health budget, commit to continue addressing the gender-based violence and also generally, improving the quality of health services,” Ms Kiyange said during a universal periodic review feedback workshop in Kampala last week.
“Indeed, we have seen some progress so far, if you look at the national budget for this financial year, the budget allocated to the health sector, we see there is progressive increase of money for health. I think that is a good indication that indeed government is committed to implementing the recommendations that were discussed in Geneva as part of the periodic review,” she added.
Mr Sylvester Mubiru, the assistant commissioner of budget at the Health ministry, while speaking during a post budget dialogue in Kampala on Friday, explained that the total approved budget for the health sub-programme for the current financial year is Shs3.7 billion, which is an 11 percent increment from the last financial year of Shs3.3b.
He added that the increment represented a 7.7 percent of the approved government budget up from 7.5 percent the previous financial year.
In 2001, African Union member states signed the Abuja Declaration, thereby pledging to allocate at least 15 percent of their national budgets each year to improving healthcare systems. But to this day, fulfilling this pledge has been a struggle for the Southern African Development Community member states.
Ms Kiyange said the Ministry of Health is doing weekly surveillance on maternal deaths.
“Though not all hospitals have started reporting, we have started getting real time data of how many mothers and babies are dying in our health facilities and is helping them to address the problems in real time,” Ms Kiyange said.
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