Kiruddu National Referral Hospital has started conducting operational research for every patient first conducting confirmatory tests to find out, which infection and sensitivity of the organ they have before prescribing a drug that specifically treats the kind of infection.
While this should be basic practice for any health worker, Charles Kabugo, the Hospital Executive Director told a meeting attended by the Health Ministry Permanent Secretary Dr. Diana Atwine and Ambassadors of Uganda to Germany and Germany to Uganda that before starting this research they conducted a baseline assessment and the results were saddening as health workers were prescribing unnecessary medicines and ordering tests that are just a wastage of money.
At the meeting on Monday, the Germany Ambassador to Uganda, Matthias Schauer handed over a donation of ventilators and other hospital equipment estimated at 163,000 Euros, which he said came after the head of the Saxon State Chancellery, Olive Schenk’s visit to Uganda in June 2022.
He said, then they realized that Uganda had a gap in treatment and a great need for ventilators considering the high prevalence of infectious diseases with severe respiratory problems accompanying them.
On her part, Dr Atwine said these equipments have come in handy since they will help in doing critical tests and getting results promptly to guide treatment.
She noted that the challenge of antibiotics misuse is concerning for hospitals like Kiruddu where majority of patients handled are in critical state requiring very expensive antibiotics. Once these are resisted, she says there will be no option as some of the very high -line medicines are unaffordable by the government
As a solution, Dr Atwine says right from the lower health facilities in the districts, the Ministry of Health had issued a directive to have therapeutic committees to guide prescription of drugs but many of these are inexistent.
However, apart from this misuse of antibiotics surveillance, Kabugo reveals that the hospital went into a partnership with Germany where Ugandan doctors are sent abroad to acquire more skills in handling diseases of the nature that the hospital handles and sometimes under the same arrangement get German specialists and students to practice from here.
Kabugo says what they would need more is having German Intensive Care Specialists sent to practice from Kiruddu since their staff are able to shadow with them and pick skills because they are exposed other than having few Ugandan doctors travelling there because of the cost implications.