The Minister of Health has decried Uganda’s over reliance on foreign donors in funding Uganda’s health sector budget, saying that in the 2024/25 national budget the Ministry of Health has been allocated Shs1.328Trn, of which 85% of this total budget is being financed by donors.
“In the 2024/25 national budget, the Ministry of Health has been allocated Shs1.328Trn. We take note that external financing takes a greater percentage. The budget under the Ministry of Health is highly subsidized by external donors at 85% and these funds are earmarked for health commodities like Global Fund and GAVI that benefit the entire health system. There is a need to mobilize domestic resources in a phased manner in the mid-term,” said Aceng.
The decry comes shortly after Minister of Health Ruth Aceng revealed that the international donors announced plans to end funding malaria projects in Uganda and the government has to raise its own funds to fight against malaria, because the donors have now turned their focus on other global issues like wars in Ukraine and Gaza as well as climate change activities.
“Our partners are no longer willing to increase any more funding for malaria, they have all leveled off. We were invited to Cameroon recently, I was there in person and we were told the world has moved on to climate change issues, global health, and security and to wars in Ukraine and Israel. So, we were told to sign a declaration that each of the 10 high burden countries will look for their own domestic resources and bring their malaria pandemics or epidemics to an end by themselves. So, we are not looking for any additional increase of resources for malaria, it has to be domestic resources,” said the Minister.
Jane Aceng, therefore declared that all organ transplant activities in Uganda have been halted until Shs5Bn is availed for the training and operations of the Human Organ Transplant Council.
The Minister explained that the Shs5 billion is required for functionalization of the Human Organ Transplant Council of which, Shs3.6 billion will be for training and benchmarking, whereas Shs1.4 billion will be spent on operations of the Council.
“We have halted all transplant activities because we need a Council in place. Yesterday as you were touring the surgical exhibition, you saw the facilities that are ready, they cannot operate unless we have a Council and the Council has to be trained because it is virgin land in Uganda,” Aceng said.
