I have been informed that this year we had 1,747 medical interns; who included 911 Medical Doctors and Dentists; 185 Pharmacists and 651 graduate Nurses and Midwives. This is a slight increase from 1,690 of last year and 1,250 interns the year before.
I applaud the Universities for the increase of the Human Resources for Health for our job market.
Uganda at 23 health workers (doctor, nurses and midwives) per 10,000 population is still far below the WHO target of 45/10,000. The doctors to the population ratio is even more miserable at 1.8/10,000 population.
Records from our Councils actually indicate that we have only 8,000 Doctors and 97,326 Nurses & Midwives registered in Uganda.
This is against a population of over 45 Million people.
The Country, therefore, needs to produce more health workers. However, Ministry of Education and Sports and the National Council for Higher Education must be strict on the quality of education in Health Training Institutions to ensure we produce graduates who are not a danger to our population.
In the Public Sector, our Human Resource Structure has provided for doctors up to HC3 (Sub-Country level). As and when resources get available, we will be recruiting doctors and many more health workers (nurses, midwives and allied health workers) all the way to the sub-county level.
Government has also revised and improved the HR structures for all other levels of care up to the National Referral Hospitals which will be filled in phases depending on our resource envelope.
This is in addition to a number of health workers who will be absorbed in the private sector.
President Museveni
