Cabinet To Decide On Mulago Charges When It Re-Opens

By Admin

The executive director Mulago national specialized hospital, Dr. Byarugaba Baterana reveals that its cabinet to decide on the fees to be charged for treatment when Mulago national specialized hospital re-opens after renovation.

The facility which has been undergoing renovation since 2014 following acquisition of a loan from African development bank to a tune of USD.35M, will only offer specialized treatment to patients in various fields after referral from regional referral hospitals.

Dr. Baterena who today led the media on a two hours partial tour of the facility says, gone are the days when every Ugandan with all kinds of illness had to flock to Mulago for treatment. They will only be handling very serious cases referred to them from other facilities.

He notes that currently he is not in line to give estimates of how much they will charge for treatment when the facility re-opens but assures the media that it’s the cabinet with the powers to set charges for treatment and that this will be based on the cost of investment visa vi the then economic status as well as comparing to charges in similar facilities both local and foreign.

Further, Dr. Baterana confirms that complex treatment like bone marrow transplant among other transplants like heart, kidney, lungs and many more will be done here. The facility will need 3075 health workers but only 460 have been trained to start work when the hospital re-opens.

However, the project focal person, David Nuwamanya confirms that they work done stands at 92% as most of the theaters, Intensive care units among other treatment centers are almost complete with some treatment and diagnostic machines fixed. The facility will be having an integrated system to make work very easy for health workers as they will not need to use papers to carry out patient treatment and identification since right from the gates, a patient will need to have their details taken and fed into the system for easy trucking.

This will also apply to the security of the facility. Most of the equipment will be bar coded with security feature to alert in case there is someone stealing them.

The renovated facility now houses 27 theatres with a 24 bed intensive care unit, over 20 bed pediatric treatment center, museum, modern kitchen and laundry with the state of the art treatment machines said to be housed in Mulago in this region if not sub sahara Africa.

The contractors and administration now need USD.9.5M equivalent to UGX.35Bn to have the work done within five months.

A total cost of USD.35M was initially planned to finance the whole renovation works but have increased to USD.38M due to un expected and un planned works to the 1962 health facility.

                                                                      END