Medics want National Health Insurance Bill retabled
A group of joint medical professionals has demanded parliament to ask the government to retable the National Health Insurance Scheme bill.
Led by the former president of Uganda Medical Workers and a professor of Medicine and Cardiology at Uganda Martyrs University Prof. Paul George Darbela to meet the Speaker of Parliament Anita Among, they asked that the bill be brought back to parliament for processing.
Prof Darbela said Uganda should copy from neighboring countries such as Tanzania where 37% of citizens’ medical bills are covered by the National Health Insurance Scheme, Kenya with 23%, and Uganda with less than 3%.
“We don’t know what is happening. I had the opportunity four years ago to sit in a meeting in Nairobi dealing exactly with National Health Insurance and I was shocked by the figures,” Prof Darbela said.
In her response, Among promised to ask the Minister for Health to retable the bill.
The bill, which was withdrawn by the government from the 10th parliament, in clause 21, wanted the government’s obligations in national health insurance including the provision of adequate funding for the scheme and ensuring that all Ugandans have access to health services,
