By Chris Mugasha
The deputy speaker of parliament Thomas Tayebwa and Members of parliament (MPs) who on Friday attended the burial of Bushenyi’s giant Obadiah Ntebekeine Rushambuza ‘freezed’ when mourners openly told them off their disappointment with Parliament.
It was all started by the Bushenyi district NRM chairman AlHajji Hassan Bassajjabalaba who told off the deputy speaker and the MPs who were in attendance.
Bassajjabalaba told the MPs that they must legislate and come up with measures of improving on the health facilities/hospitals in the country if Ugandans are to be saved from cases of sudden death. He said the country cannot continue loosing people in unclear circumstances.
The late Ntebekeine had attended about four functions of his friends both in Bushenyi and Sheema. While at a function in Sheema district together with his wife Naome Kibaju the Sheema North MP, Ntebekeine collapsed before he was rushed to Mbarara regional referral hospital.
At Mbarara regional hospital, doctors could not do anything and instead Ntebekeine was airlifted to Mulago national hospital from where he was flown to Agakhan Hospital in Kenya where he later died from. “We cannot continue losing our people in this manner,” Bassajjabalaba fumed as he narrated how Ntebekeine helped him in business. Ntebekeine was buried at his ancestral home, in Ntungamo-Nyakabirizi in Bushenyi district.
Bassajjabalaba challenged the MPs saying the allocations they are giving to projects like Kiruddu hospital and the controversial Lubowa hospital are a ‘wastage’ of resources that would have be channeled to equipping and standardizing the existing facilities/hospitals to begin offering specialized services/treatment.
Bassajjabalaba also wants the MPs to come up with a policy of leasing the existing regional government hospitals to private investors who can standardize them to offer quality services to people on both public and private arrangement.
He said in some countries which have moved far interms of providing health services to people, the above policy of (private public partnership) has worked well. He said government partnering with the private sector including church is the only option if the health sector is to be improved.
“The way it standards now, it will be very difficult to standardize them (government hospitals),” Bassajjabalaba told the MPs as mourners cheered him on. Bassajjabalaba the proprietor of Kampala International University Teaching hospital in Ishaka-Bushenyi also asked MPs to expedite the process of passing the health insurance bill.
Elly Karuhanga a longtime friend to Ntebekeine whose recorded speech was played before mourners also scoffed at government saying, “This must stop. Uganda should be a medical treatment hub.”
Karuhanga told off the MPs stressing that, “This is an indictment. We cannot continue like this.”
The Bishop of West Ankole diocese Rt. Rev Johnson Twinomujuni said it’s unfortunate that Ugandans lose a lot of money abroad in issues of seeking for specialized medical services/treatment. “Uganda is still a low income status country but even the little we have, we still take it outside,” Bishop Twinomujuni expressed.
Referring to one of his staff (priests) who has been referred to India, the Bishop said very few people have got the capacity to seek for treatment abroad. “My priest is stranded because he had even failed to raise money to take him to Kampala and now how do you expect him to afford to go to India?” the Bishop wondered adding that, “our people, our parents cannot manage abroad because it’s very expensive.”
“Equip our health facilities/hospitals so that if we are to be operated, we get operated from here (Uganda) and if we are to die, we die from our country,” Twinomujuni challenged.
The deputy speaker of parliament Thomas Tayebwa agreed with Bassajjabalaba’s argument.
Tayebwa however explained that government has already taken on the health sector as priority. He said government has been focusing on health centres to help people access services especially saving them (people) from dying of malaria. “Obadiah did not die because of poor facilities,” Tayebwa responded.
He explained that government has already finalized plans of making sure that each region has a centre of excellence that manages cancer. “We started with Gulu and the intention is to help our people to access cancer treatment services,” the deputy speaker explained.
On the delayed construction of Lubowa hospital, Tayebwa apologized to mourners saying, “it has delayed but now by April next year (2025) we should be equipping the hospital.” End.
