Justice Irene Mulyagonja’s video about the state of Mulago, Uganda’s national referral hospital, is not revealing anything new—but it has renewed the debate about how the country’s healthcare system has become a colossal failure.
People are paying even more attention because Justice Mulyagonja, being a judge of the Court of Appeal and having served as head of the Inspectorate of Government, is no ordinary Ugandan. Cries of ordinary people about the state of healthcare often get ignored.
The video has circulated widely on social media, and the judge has revealed how her desperate search for a well-equipped and affordable hospital led her to Mulago.
She began her late husband John Baptist Kakooza’s treatment at IHK, a private hospital, but she says she had to abandon it for Mulago’s private wing, which is more affordable.
Yet nothing could have prepared her for the experience at the referral hospital. The hospital, she said, could not even provide a shot of insulin, much less a nasogastric (NG) tube to feed her husband.
“At the end of his life, Mr Kakooza failed to eat,” she says.
Then came the hollow assurances from the doctors. “Someone comes in the morning and says, ‘Oh, we’ll put an NG tube.’ He disappears. The next person comes on duty and says, ‘Oh, we are going to put an NG tube. And he disappears.Then finally in the evening, someone comes and says, ‘You know what? We don’t have [the tube]’.”
Mulago’s problems range from its failure to pay water bills and to accommodate patients at the Cancer Institute, many of whom sleep in the open, as newspapers have reported.
Diana Atwine, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of health, once told MPs that the hospital should use boreholes to manage the water bill problem.
Fixing these problems is rarely prioritised because, as this column argued recently, many government officials do not use the hospital and often seek treatment from private medical facilities. People who go to Mulago often do not have better options.
This past April, former Foreign Affairs minister Sam Kuteesa, who chose Germany over Mulago for his throat cancer treatment, stunned Ugandans by unveiling a church he said was in appreciation of God for curing the disease.
It is tempting to urge the authorities to invest in Mulago and increase the budget for healthcare, but the truth remains that it is hard for government officials to spend money on a health system they do not use.
The lesson for Ugandans from the Mulyagonja experience is not Mulago failing to live up to her expectations; it is the sheer impossibility of ordinary Ugandans to get decent treatment using their own means.
Justice Mulyagonja worked as IGG for many years, and the job comes with an enviable salary. She has social security and is working as a judge—a position that pays much more than what a teacher or a policeman could ever dream of.
Her late husband was a prominent lawyer and once served as the corporation secretary for the National Social Security Fund whose portfolio is worth trillions of shillings. Yet the couple struggled with the medical bills.
In the video, Justice Mulyagonja says she went to no fewer than four hospitals in a bid to find one that was wallet friendly.
Against this background, you can see why a teacher on a salary of shs500,000 can never get real treatment, and if they are gravely ill, they can only wait for a slow painful death.
It is tempting to urge the authorities to invest in Mulago and increase the budget for healthcare, but the truth remains that it is hard for government officials to spend money on a health system they do not use.
Justice Mulyagonja’s ordeal is not just a personal tragedy—it is what every Ugandan who finds themselves in hospital is likely to endure.
Until the government reviews its healthcare policy and implements effective reforms while also investing heavily in healthcare, nothing is going to change for the better.
The Ministry of Health is planning to introduce the National Health Insurance Scheme. If it works well, it can and will fix problems such as Justice Mulyagonja’s. But will it? Can it?
The scheme needs money to get off the ground, but if it gets the money, that money may become its biggest problem. Given the rampant corruption, which extends to the health sector, chances of the money getting stolen are very high.
🔴 Musaazi Namiti is the Founder and Editorial Director of OJ-UGANDA. He previously led the Africa Desk at Al Jazeera in Doha, Qatar, worked for Globe Media Asia in Cambodia and writes a widely read column for Uganda’s Sunday Monitor. His work has been quoted by The New York Times, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Jeune Afrique, The Africa Report—not for playing it safe, but for saying what others will not.
Email: musaazinamiti@ojuganda.com
X: @kazbuk
