COMMENT: Exporting health workers

There are several difficult questions which arise in the circumstances. Why are Ugandan health workers being targeted for mass foreign recruitment? Why is the government not recruiting the apparently available health workers in Uganda to reduce its critical shortage? Why are health workers in Uganda’s health system opting to abandon their country to work in foreign countries? Is the government taking any action to prevent the health sector from hemorrhaging its health workers to foreign health sectors?

There is also interplay of human rights which the government is required to protect, respect and fulfill. Primarily the government has an obligation to provide medical care which it should fulfill by hiring the adequate levels of staff to provide health care to the public. In light of the critical shortage of health workers in Uganda, it is clear that there is a severe failure by the government to fulfill this obligation. Health workers within the public health system also have a right to practice their profession and earn a living from it under healthy and satisfactory working conditions.

When health workers are poorly paid, have to operate under unhealthy conditions without adequate equipment and commodities to enable them do their job, and are consistently overburdened such that they are unable to provide the quality of health care expected of them in the circumstances, their right to practice their profession is violated. Dealing with heavy workload results in criminal liability for health workers for lapses in professional judgment and the failure to provide an acceptable quality of health care due to lack of adequate equipment and commodities to provide it. Poor pay and unsatisfactory working conditions often result in failure to provide for their families’ essential needs and loss of concentration at work because health workers are compelled to take on other gigs for extra income.

The Ministry of Health has been conspicuously silent while foreign countries poach on our human resources. And yet there is no question that the health sector in Uganda needs to be protected from the massive loss of health workers who are actually in short supply. It has been suggested by some that a ban should be placed on migration of health workers given their critical need in Uganda. This in my view would be an unconstitutional violation of the right to practice one’s profession wherever they want to especially in light of the poor treatment of health workers in Uganda. Sharks in foreign countries have sensed blood in Uganda and are aware that health workers in Uganda are highly qualified, competent and are there for the taking. First it was Trinidad and Tobago and now it is Libya, we can only expect more to come. Health workers should be given the priority they deserve in Uganda first by significantly improving their remuneration and working conditions and filling all the 31% of the unfilled positions in the public health sector.

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James Zeere is a human rights lawyer and health rights Advocate.