Obstetricians and gynecologists ask for deployment, payment of interns

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT |  Obstetricians and Gynecologists have joined the push to demand for immediate deployment and payment of medical interns.

Dr. Othiniel Musana, the President of the Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Uganda (AOGU) told URN in an interview that medical interns and Senior House Officers are the ones literally running maternity wards across the country considering the limited number of specialists. They are therfore the single source of data on women dying in labor.

Dr. Musana says that due to the high rates of maternal mortality, the Ministry of Health (MOH) introduced a system of requiring health workers to make full account of every maternal death they record at the facility, something they technically refer to as maternal death audits.

According to the MOH Health Annual Performance report 2022 released two weeks ago, deaths reviewed increased significantly to 89.4% from 76% in FY 2020/21 surpassing the target of 80%. A total of 1,226 health facility based maternal deaths were reported and of these, 1,195 (97.5%) were notified and 1,096 (89.4%) were reviewed and electronically entered in the Ministry of Health online system.

Dr. Musana says this data is majorly provided by interns and Senior House Officers (SHOs) who are first to review mothers when they report and yet health facilities are now having a vacuum pending deployment of the new cohort of medical interns.  Also, only sections of SHOs have been given their monthly allowances as others await arrears spanning five months.  If these situation remains like this for the next two months, the consultant warns, not just maternal mortality figures will suddenly increase but also babies.

Already, the MOH reports shows neonatal deaths happening within health facilities is still high with 5899 deaths recorded in the FY2021/2022. Dr. Musana says to cut down on these deaths, it requires devotion and timely specialized care which will be hard to maintain or even improve without help of these trainees.

However, the interns are supposed to have reported to the various internship centers by April 01st but to date they are unaware when training will start as they haven’t heard from MOH even after threats to strike.

According to Adson Tumuhimbise, a Pre-Intern from Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST) they only received information that government had written to hospital directors informing them that commencement of internship would delay.

Emmanuel Ainebyoona, the MOH Public Relations Officer confirmed this to URN saying that they are struggling to find money for allowances for the more than a thousand interns who will be joining. Each intern is paid a monthly allowance of 2.5million shillings for a period of one year.

Ainebyoona says the decision about when interns report will depend on the consensus reached by Ministries of Health, Education and Finance.

Meanwhile, their counterparts, the SHOs who are supposed to earn a monthly allowance of 1.8million shillings went on strike and reported back to the hospitals before their pay grievances could be completely solved.

Their representative Dr. Robert Lubega says they resolved to report back to work when the Ministry made part payments to some of the 536 SHOs. Now, he says they are perturbed to learn that government is proposing to erase allowances and only offer them accommodation and food.

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URN