During the Private Health Sector Convention organized by the Uganda Healthcare Federation (UHF), Dr. Tom Aliti, the Commissioner in charge of partnerships in the Ministry of Health, highlighted some concerning issues regarding private health providers in Uganda.
He revealed that although private health providers serve as the first point of care for over 50 percent of the population, their activities are not accurately tracked due to a lack of data contribution to the Health Information System.
According to Dr. Aliti, all hospitals, regardless of ownership (government or private), are required to report patient-based data to the district-level data system.
However, he pointed out that only 35 percent of private hospitals are currently contributing patient-related data to this system. This data gap significantly hampers the Ministry’s ability to obtain an accurate picture of the country’s health indicators and affects their analysis and decision-making processes.
Aliti was speaking just after an assessment report done by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) revealed gaps in the maintenance of Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) measures in especially lower-level private health facilities in Kampala.
According to Louis Bayo, a member of the team that conducted the assessment, they assessed 2,137 health facilities during the Ebola viral disease outbreak to establish the readiness of these facilities to handle highly infectious diseases and found major gaps in the majority of them.
He says that later on, they used a scorecard approved by the Ministry of Health to do a follow-up assessment on 7,696 facilities across the five divisions of Kampala and only 42 per cent had the required IPC measures in place. When it comes to lower private facilities at the level of Health Center II, only 2 per cent were performing well and yet these are the ones most frequented by the population.
Commenting about these concerns, Grace Kiwanuka the Executive Director of UHF, which is the umbrella body that brings together private providers says conducting disease surveillance requires hospitals to be supported with training and access to materials they would need to collect the data but these are mainly provided to government hospitals and the Private – Not –for profit hospitals.
She also notes that while the assessment finds lower-level health facilities to have major gaps, they are run by technical people, although these are not consistently retooled to be up to date with the changes in the health sector.
She says the federation has since recognized this challenge and is currently conducting monthly virtual meetings to share knowledge on the latest developments in the centre.
Furthermore, Dr. Aliti highlighted that private hospital administrators seldom attend the monthly meetings organized by the Ministry to address areas of need and explore opportunities for collaboration between the government and the private sector to improve service delivery.
The absence of private sector representation in these meetings further skews the analysis and decision-making processes, making it difficult to develop comprehensive strategies to enhance healthcare in the country.
Aliti says assessment results have been shared with the private providers to help them re-organize themselves but if nothing changes, he says some of them will be closed.
The Private Health Sector Convention serves as a platform to assess the performance of private health providers in Uganda and likely addresses various challenges and opportunities in the sector.