CoRSU Rehabilitation Hospital has unveiled a new 1.8 million Euro facility, which will quadruple the number of cases serviced annually. Currently, the hospital serves 29,000 patients in its outpatient department, with 12,000 receiving rehabilitation therapy.
Dr Moses Muhumuza, the Medical Director, said that the new structure now houses not only six operating theatres, but also a workshop that has already begun producing helpful gadgets for people with various disabilities.
CoRSU, which is largely sponsored by donors, provides therapies such as physical rehabilitation, physiotherapy, plastic surgery, and speech and language therapy, with 70% of its patients being youngsters.
According to Muhumuza, children under the age of five receive free care. However, while the facility was initially set up for children, the huge need for such services in the country among adults led to the opening of the adult wing who currently account for 30%. These are required to pay for the service.
Hellen Grace Asamo, the State Minister for Disability Affairs called for funding to subsidize services for adults too saying that people with disability are often too poor to afford basic rehabilitative services, and yet orthopedic departments in the free government facilities are run down.
Countrywide, she says more than seven million people are living with a form of disability but only a few can afford or access assistive devices. She gives an example of her crutches revealing that she failed to get a pair that matched her weight in the country and resorted to importing.
Asamo notes that this is not the only challenge as specialists such as orthopedic and plastic surgeons are also hard to find in Uganda with a few available concentrating at national referral hospitals.
CoRSU employs eighteen such specialists but Muhumuza says keeping them is very costly and it partly explains why their adult services are quite pricey. He calls for government intervention to second some specialists to work at the facility considering that they have the equipment but lack enough personnel to run them.