“We are not short of planners; we are starved of priorities.”
In the lecture halls of Uganda’s medical schools, the light never goes out. Bright young minds, driven by hope, duty, and dreams of saving lives, burn the midnight oil for five long years.
Their families scrape together every shilling, selling land, cattle, even their only homes, believing that the sacrifices will one day yield a doctor. A saviour. A healer.
And yet, more than 2,000 of these young doctors now sit in limbo, brilliant, qualified, and broken. They are locked out of hospitals, unable to practice because the government has, for four consecutive years, refused to fund their mandatory internships.
This is not just an administrative failure. This is a national disgrace. A betrayal. A slow-motion massacre.
The internship budget, once set at UGX 36 billion, was slashed to just UGX 16 billion in 2024, making it impossible to deploy the thousands of graduates who stood ready to serve. And as of July 2025, over 2,000 interns remain stranded, most of them trained in our public universities.
Without internship, they cannot be licensed. They cannot treat. They cannot even volunteer. They can only watch, as their skills fade, their parents grieve, and their country bleeds.
Meanwhile, the health system teeters on the brink. In 2023, the Ministry of Health admitted that public hospitals were operating at just 46% of their required staffing levels. In Karamoja, it was worse, a mere 38%. Picture this: one doctor expected to care for over 25,000 patients. Nurses stretched across three shifts, surgeons going from dawn to dusk without pause.
People die waiting in queues. Babies are delivered in candlelight. Bodies pile up, not because there’s no cure, but because there’s no one left to care.
And all this, while 2,000 doctors rot at home? Something is deeply, catastrophically wrong.
Visit any hospital in Lira, Moroto, Hoima, or Mbarara, you’ll see the decay with your own eyes. Radiographers? None. Anaesthetists? Gone. Midwives? Overwhelmed.
In some health centers, surgeries are done using flashlights from mobile phones. Some patients wait weeks for a consultation because doctors are outnumbered 100 to 1.
And yet, government claims “there’s no money.” No money? But there was UGX 62.4 billion for domestic travel by the Office of the President in 2024. One single inland trip reportedly costs the taxpayer over UGX 500 million. Cancel just ten of those trips and you save UGX 5 billion, enough to fully fund internships for over 400 doctors.
No money? But the government found UGX 12 billion for new luxury cars for cultural leaders, money that could have trained 1,066 interns. And still, the Masaka Maternal and Child Health Wing, completed in 2021, lies silent. Why? Because UGX 6 billion was never released to equip it. So, mothers deliver on cold cement floors while gleaming buildings gather dust.
Are we okay?
The Ministry of Gender, Labor and Social Development managed to disburse UGX 5 billion under Emyooga. But no such urgency is extended to doctors, nurses, or patients. We fund cosmetics while our people bleed. We prioritize showbiz over survival.
Now compare that with our neighbors.
In Rwanda, a bold partnership with U.S. universities created the Human Resources for Health program, streamlining internship placements and absorbing young medics. Rwanda now boasts 1 doctor per 10,000 people, and climbing.
In Kenya, over 4,000 medical interns are absorbed annually through its Universal Health Coverage program.
Even in Tanzania, despite economic pressure, more than 3,200 health workers were recruited in 2023 under a World Bank-backed health systems plan.
And Uganda?
We let dreams die in silence. The Uganda Medical Association (UMA) estimates that over 600 doctors have already fled Uganda in just the last two years, some to South Sudan, Botswana, Namibia. Each one cost taxpayers nearly UGX 100 million to train. They are now serving elsewhere, while our own people suffer.
Where is our national conscience? Where is our leadership? Mr. President, enough is enough.
We know you can act. We’ve seen you act, decisively, even swiftly, on the movement of cattle herders in Acholi, and on corruption in public offices. But the health of 45 million Ugandans is more urgent than cattle. The souls of 2,000 young doctors are crying out, not for a job, but for a chance to heal.
We don’t need another speech. We need an Extraordinary Executive Emergency Order, not next year, not in your memoirs, but NOW, before your 2021–2026 term ends.
I call on you, Mr. President, to act on these six critical fronts:
● Direct the Ministry of Finance to immediately release funds for the placement of all 2,000 medical interns in the 2025/26 fiscal year.
● Operationalize and equip all completed but idle health facilities, beginning with Masaka MCH complex, and audit all ghost infrastructure.
● Establish a Health Workforce Stabilization Fund, earmarked for internships, continuous training, and health worker welfare.
● Rehabilitate strategic health access roads, like the Amolatar–Dokolo route. You cannot reach a hospital if the road is a death trap.
● Review and increase UPE and USE capitation grants. Public education is dying quietly. Save it while there’s still time.
● Pay arts teachers and fulfill government wage commitments. We can’t educate a generation on empty promises.
We don’t need witch doctors. We need political will.
Ugandans are not begging for luxury; they are begging for life. We are not asking for perfection. We are pleading for priorities. A country that cannot care for its sick, cannot place its doctors, cannot educate its children, what future does it imagine for itself?
If we do not act now, we will lose more than just interns. We will lose faith. We will lose the very idea of Uganda as a compassionate, functioning society.
Mr. President, history is calling. Be remembered not just for roads and peace, but for saving the soul of Uganda’s healthcare system.
#EmergencyForInternsNow | #HealthNotConvoys | #FundOurFutureDoctors
About the Author:
Dr. Bob Marley Achura is a global health and development specialist with over two decades of experience in public health systems across East and Southern Africa. He writes in his personal capacity.
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