Donors shun funding Naguru Hospital over name

The Director of China-Uganda Friendship Hospital, Naguru,  Dr Emmanuel Tugaineyo, has revealed that the inclusion of the name China on their hospital has alienated the facility from receiving support from Western donors.

“The name China-Uganda Friendship Hospital has alienated us from implementing partners, you know, the people who wouldn’t want to put their money where that name and yet they are the main funders and implementing partners and yet the Government feels the Chinese are helping us, and yet they don’t. What they bring us in kind usually contain acupuncture needles, gloves, things like that,” said Tugaineyo.

Dr Tugaineyo made the remarks while appearing before Parliament’s Health Committee, where he appeared to defend the FY2024/25 budget for the facility as allocated under the Budget Framework Paper.

He noted that the nomenclature of the hospital has isolated it from the main financial partners in the US and Europe, who prefer not to associate their money with anything to do with China.

Dr Tugaineyo also informed Parliament that Naguru Hospital is currently grappling with underfunding for patient meals, fuelling staff vehicles, and paying water and electricity bills.

“Even now, as a director, I fuel my own vehicle because the money for the fuel gets finished, and I have to go to work. We don’t have a budget for the oxygen plan, patients’ meals, cleaning services, or fees for the hospital board. I hope that the supplementary that was given to us to offset some of the arrears will come to pass, I hope it won’t come at the end of the financial year because we had arrears of about Shs1.5Bn for water, we have arrears of electricity of more than UGX 100 million. We have arrears for cleaning services, but in this budget, we will still incur the same arrears,” he added.

In the 2024/25 BFP, Naguru Hospital has been allocated UGX 22.719 billion, of which UGX 9.584 billion is for wages, UGX 10.622 billion for non-wage expenditures and UGX 2.513 billion is for development.

Among the key unfunded priorities Naguru Hospital is grappling with is an extra UGX 1 billion for the purchase of medicines and other medical supplies like laboratory reagents, gloves, and medical sundries, among others.

The officials also decried overcrowding within the health facility, a challenge they attributed to a poor functioning referral system, yet this situation is further exacerbated by the high cost of maintaining the building.