Uganda: Members of Parliament (MPs) want healthcare gaps fixed despite slight progress

Ugandan’s uptake of health care services keeps improving reflecting an increased confidence in the country’s referral system, the Minister of Health, Hon. Chris Baryomunsi has noted.

The Minister, who presented a statement on the performance of the health sector during the House sitting on Thursday, 15 October 2026 said that over 66 per cent of patients sought care at lower-level facilities including Health Centres III and IV.

“This reflects increasing confidence in Uganda’s referral system. Government health facilities accounted for 77 per cent of all outpatient attendances, followed by private-not-for-profit at 13 per cent, and private-for-profit facilities 10 per cent,” he said.

But during a debate on his statement in the plenary held on Tuesday, 20 October 2026, MPs said there are recurrent challenges requiring urgent fixing.

Hon. Anna Adeke (FDC, Soroti district women rep.) who read a statement on behalf of the opposition, said there is little to celebrate as far as progress in the health sector is concerned.

“The Abuja Declaration requires a 15 per cent budget allocation to health, yet the government stagnates at a mere 7 per cent; more critically, the deliberate delay in passing and operationalizing a functional National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) forces citizens to shoulder a staggering 29 to 32 per cent of total health costs out-of-pocket, driving over l3 per cent of households into catastrophic poverty annually,” she said.

In his statement, Baryomunsi had promised increased government investment in health infrastructure, but MP Adeke disputed the viability of that strategy.

“The true measure of a functioning health sector is not the beauty of physical structures, but service availability, readiness and financial protection,” she said.

Minister Baryomunsi said the financing requirement for essential medicines and health supplies grew by 14 per cent to US$1.06 billion, driven by population growth and disease burden, with a funding gap of US$491 million.

Among other challenges, the Minister cited understaffing trailing at 34 per cent of its staffing structure, and a rising malaria incidence in high burden regions including Acholi, Teso and Lango sub regions.

“The Ministry will prioritise progressive increase of health sector staffing from the current 34 per cent toward 55 per cent by 2030, alongside continued investment in pre-service and in-service training.

We will also scale-up the Community Health Extension Worker programme nationwide as a cost-effective platform for last-mile service delivery,” he said.

Hon. Francis Zaake (NUP, Mityana Munic.), however, said the most critical issues affecting the sector is theft of equipment and medicines, coupled with low pay affecting staff morale.

“These are issues clear enough to everyone; equipment gets lost every day, medicine gets depleted immediately it is supplied to the facility and we need to work on the salaries of these people [health workers],” he said.

The Minister observed that the road traffic mortality rate per 100,000 population also remained high at 35.4 against the 27.7 target for financial year 2025/2026.

“These increasing deaths from road traffic injuries are largely driven by factors such as poor road infrastructure, weak enforcement of road safety policies, and unsafe road user behaviors,” he said.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Parliament of the Republic of Uganda.