MPs on Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee have protested that charges imposed on patients at Mulago Specialised Women and Neonatal Hospital, yet the facility is only collecting only Shs7Bn in revenue annually, compared to around Shs31Bn annual budget the facility receives from Government.
This was after Muwanga Kivumbi (Butambala County) asked the Hospital administrators to provide the breakdown of costs charged patients, and wondered if the revenue collected from the patients is worth having the facility continue charging Ugandans who are also servicing the US$34.14 Million (Shs129.220Bn) acquired from the Islamic Development Bank for its construction.
However, Dr. Evelyn Nabunya, Executive Director at Mulago Specialised Women and Neonatal Hospital said the decision for the facility to charge Ugandans was taken by Cabinet, which also ordered for the establishment of a Waiver Committee to deal with cases of Ugandans who can’t afford rates charged by the Hospital.
“The decision to be able to charge for services came from Cabinet and a team of Cabinet members came here to verify why people should pay and they guided the team on how to set these charges and they also guided that there should be a waiver Committee to be enable Ugandans who can’t afford the services to be able to access them,” said Nabunya.
Administrators of Mulago Specialised Women & Neonatal Hospital, women who have normal delivery on the Gold card are charged Shs1M, while normal delivery under Platinum is Shs2.5M, C-Section under silver is Shs1.3M, while holders of the gold card that undergo C-section are charged Shs2.5M, while patients on gold card are charged Shs2.5M, while the VIP platinum cost Shs4M for patients who have C-section.
Upon receiving the rates, Muwanga wondered what would happen if Government instead boosted the Hospital’s budget by the amount of revenue collections and have Ugandans complete the payment of the loan used to build the hospital.
