I applauded our First lady and Minister of Education and Sports, Janet Museveni when she urged medical workers including nurses to extend their services to patients in what she called ‘hard to reach rural areas’ where healthcare access is still a big challenge.
She said this when she was releasing the May 2017 Uganda Nurses and Midwives Examination results at the office of the prime minister.
While I liked her idea, how do you expect these poor graduates to manage to extend such services in hard to reach rural areas as you called them without a penny to their names.
It’s not like these people are charity organisations. Oh no! And if they were missionaries or volunteers, I would understand but even the missionaries and volunteers that I know are fully facilitated when they go about their charity work.
So how can you of all people expect these poor souls even if their profession calls upon them to save lives, to execute the work that government has failed to accomplish. Don’t you think this is a bit callous?
First of all, you who labeled these areas hard to reach already know that in these areas, there are no hospitals to begin with. The health centers available are in bad shape and badly facilitated; no equipments, no medicine, poor housing facilities and remuneration for the medical workers.
So, if you have not bothered to improve on the above, how can you expect the newly graduated medical workers who know nothing about village life to work in such conditions? While these graduates would love to save lives, they would also like to earn a living as well.
So, if we can help these poor souls to survive, I believe that is the only way we can entice them to answer the call of saving lives in any unimaginable area. If we can’t do that, then we shall always be wasting our time in trying to convince them to work in remote areas where they have no access to anything of which can help them to save lives.
Given that our government is fully aware that the people who need most healthcare are in ‘hard to reach’ rural areas, I urge it to put all its efforts in facilitating those areas before it calls upon medical workers to extend their services. If it does that then it will have my full support.
