Kamuli general hospital health workers today Wednesday 08 laid down tools in medical national-wide strike putting many lives of patients at stake.
This comes at a time when government medics under their association dubbed Uganda Medical Association pronounced the lay down of tools citing Government’s failure to meet their problems.
Barely weeks ago president Museven Yoweri Kaguta met a group of medics in state house Entebbe where he discussed issues raised by them (medics) ,promising to tackle them as soon as possible.
Among the raised issues were; little salaries ,have no job houses , working in poor conditions and other sorts of allowances are off their ways hence making their work harder.
At Kamuli general hospital it is only sickle cells, AIDS center and maternal departments ,there rest of the departments like dental ,optics , pharmacy were closed and other departments were found empty.
” we were attended to by nurses from early morning ,and they stopped giving us services at exactly 10am and it seems they ( health workers ) received a call from a big office telling them to stop work”, patients told Monday Times.
Patients who spoke to Monday Times put a bigger blame to the government saying it is leaving essential sectors un tackled like to facilitate well workers and instead spend a lot of money onto MPs whom they say are doing nothing in the parliament.
When we contacted Kamuli general hospital senior Administrator Sophie Dhikusoka she confirmed the lay down tools by the health workers ,and and did not divugle details apart from referring us to District health officer and Chief administrative officer for the details of the lay down.
“As your seeing the situation around no doctor at site ,no nurses as you can see ,the lab is closed , pharmacy is not working”. Sophie Dhikusooka said.
However some mothers found maternal and AIDs centers said they were attended too ,and some where ignorant about the strike.
“Actually like 2 minutes the nurses have been here checking on us and about the strike we are just hearing it from you”. Nabirye Mineva an expecting mother said.
Our attempt to get Kamuli DHO’s comment was futile as didn’t pick our calls and by press time he was not in office.
