Researchers have raised concerns over budget cuts for the Ministry of Health that have left several public health facilities with a lack of essential medical supplies.
The concern has been raised by a researcher at Medical Research Center (MRC) Masaka Center Dr. Jonathan Kitonsa during a science café organized by Health Journalist Network Uganda (HEJNU) at Court Lane Hotel in Masaka.
Dr. Kitonsa says that although WHO recently declared that COVID-19 is no longer a public health emergency, there is still a need to enhance the capacity of public health facilities to prevent, diagnose, and manage COVID-19, as well as other complications that came with COVID-19 (termed as long covid). With the cuts in the health budget, it is going to be hard to maintain key services in the public health centers.
Dr Kitonsa says that regulations issued by WHO such as calls for continued surveillance, vaccination, and increased access to life-saving diagnostics, oxygen, and increasing infection prevention and control all require resources, hence the need for more funding instead of cutting the health budget and therefore called upon government to increase on the amount of money allocated to the health sector if the country is to be saved from the setbacks that come with donor fund cuts.
He was responding to remarks made by Masaka district health officer Dr. Faith Nakiyimba who revealed that the public health facilities in Masaka are stuck with the challenge of lack of COVID-19 testing kits following the expiry of several kits that had been supplied to the region.
Dr Kitonsa explains that there should be deliberate efforts made to learn to live with COVID-19 and also work hard to sustain and maintain the hard-fought gains that have been made across all aspects of the response and this can be achieved by continuous testing and vaccination of masses against COVID-19 among other measures as WHO guided countries.
“Let’s put up systems in our public facilities to manage COVID-19 and its related conditions (long covid) effects, we need to have the capacity to test COVID-19 as we test malaria and all people coming to health facilities with COVID-19 symptoms need to be to tested as well and when we find out that they are positive we have to be able to treat them,” he added.
He added that the country now has time to prepare to handle the virus and other outbreaks that may come in the future, and encouraged people to go for vaccination since vaccines are available at government facilities, adding that those that require booster doses should also go for them.
He also revealed that as researchers they are still doing various studies including a study being conducted in the districts of Wakiso, Kalungu, and Masaka, comparing the number of cases occurring among those that were vaccinated against COVID-19 and those that were not vaccinated, with the aim of determining vaccine effectiveness in the real world.
Masaka DHO Dr. Faith Nakiyimba said that with support from Korea Foundation for International Health Care (KOFIH), Masaka district is enhancing the capacity of Village Health Teams to enhance community health and disease prevention in the district.
She asked the member of the public to learn from the way they managed COVID-19 by continuing to observe Sops so that they can control ailments since some simple measures like handwashing are key in disease prevention.
Dr Nakiyimba said Masaka still has several doses of vaccines urging people to continue going to select public health facilities for vaccination as a way of increasing their ability to fight against the virus, adding that though COVID-19 is no longer a public health emergency, it’s still with us.
“Due to lack of demand for COVID-19 testing kits we had expired, but now through our VHTs we are looking at strengthening community health and this will help us to bring services closer to people including covid19, vaccination, and other disease management since they are able to refer cases to health facilities, and we expect that through community engagement we shall be able to attain 100% vaccination in our area” she added.
Richard Musisi the Executive Director of Masaka Association of Disabled Persons Living HIV/AIDS (MADIPHA) says that they helped over 1000 persons living with disabilities to access vaccination though they had missed out on vaccination during the mass vaccination campaigns.
Musisi says that they are planning to conduct another COVID-19 vaccination campaign to enable their members that missed the previous round to get vaccinated and those that got the first dose to get a second dose and those that require boosters can also be helped access them.
Juliet NalubwamaMabike one of the survivors of COVID-19 said that she got a complication of having challenges with her heart following the infection adding that she is painfully living with this condition since sometimes she feels like her heart is beating at a faster rate as if she has done some heavy work which condition she did not have before she got infected with COVID-19.