Following the decision by United States Government to end aid funding to Uganda, Mulago National Referral Hospital, has warned of the staffing and logistical crisis it faces in treating patients of HIV/AIDs, who were initially receiving treatment under several donor funded projects, but these have to be incorporate into Mulago, which is already strained with its 67% staffing level.
The concern was raised by Dr. Rosemary Byanyima, Executive Director of Mulago National Referral Hospital, while appearing before Parliament’s Health Committee to present the Hospital’s 2025/26 Ministerial Policy Statement.
“Of course, following the stop work order by the U.S. President Donald Trump, Mulago Hospital has integrated HIV care into the infectious disease clinic and that is in the medical patient department and we continue also to offer the inpatient service because we’ve been offering that. But we also have a challenge of how we manage the logistics of antiretroviral therapy but our medicines and therapeutics committee is gathering all this information from the partners who have been offering that and we are in touch with the Minister of Health for guidance,” Dr. Byanyima added.
“We see challenges in that because, we have challenges in staffing and these clinics are really heavy. Each of the organisations I have talked about sees not less than an average of 50 to 100 patients per day, each one of them. Now if all those have to come to us then we need really staffing, we need space where to run that clinic, laboratory services, managing of the records, they had already electronic system which was capturing and even follow-up of these patients to make sure that they adhere to the treatment,” said Dr. Byanyima.
Parliament was informed that currently, the level of staffing of Mulago National Referral Hospital according to the newly approved structure, has filled positions of 1,374 which is 67%, but this structure is serving two hospitals as Mulago has to be split into two health facilities.
Dr. Byanyima added, “The 67% looks fair maybe compared to other hospitals but remember this is the structure for Mulago Hospital and the plan is to have Mulago National Referral Hospital and Mulago National Specialised Hospital which is supposed to have another structure but this is not it. It was created as a different entity with the structure. So, we are literally running two hospitals as Mulago National Referral Hospital.”
Parliament has learnt that Mulago National Referral Hospital has been allocated only Shs17.756Bn for the purchase of Specialised Medical Supplies to treat the rest of Ugandans for the full year in 2025/26, yet Uganda Revenue Authority has been given Shs18.2Bn for the purchase of medicines for its staff for the same year.
This came to light during a meeting held between Parliament’s Health Committee and officials from Mulago National Referral Hospital who had appeared to present the 2025/26 Hospital’s budget, led by Dr. Rosemary Byanyima the Executive Director, who warned that if at least Shs101Bn is availed for the provision of Specialised Medical Supplies, the Hospital will continue sending patients to buy their own medicines outside the Hospital.
Mulago Specialized Women and Neonatal Hospital is seeking for additional Shs4Bn to hire 86 new staff in order to operationalise the 7theatres that are idle due to lack of specialists, and the new staff would reduce on the workload, where one nurse is being forced to attend to 10 babies in the neonatal unit, yet the recommended ratio requires one nurse to attend to 1-2 babies.
The appeal was made by Dr. Evelyn Nabunya, Executive Director of Mulago Specialized Women and Neonatal Hospital, while appearing before Parliament’s Health Committee to present the Hospital’s 2025/26 national budget. She said the money is required to recruit super specialists such as in anaesthesia, intensive care.
