{UAH} Fuad: Diplomatic furore over foreign docs ...Uganda activists block plan to recruit 250 healthcare workers for T&T

Fuad: Diplomatic furore over foreign docs ...Uganda activists block plan to recruit 250 healthcare workers for T&T

• Published on Aug 22, 2015, 7:57 pm AST
• By Denyse Renne

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'arrangement falls flat': Dr Fuad Khan

GOVERNMENT has had to shelve plans to get more than 250 healthcare workers from Uganda to come to Trinidad and Tobago to work because it caused a "diplomatic furore".

Last December, Govern­ment, through a memoran­dum of understanding (MOU), sought to have the foreign medical care workers, including doctors, nurses and specialists, brought to the country to assist in the medical system.

At the time, Health Minister Dr Fuad Khan said funds for this recruitment drive were estimated at $140 milli­on and would come from the Health Ministry as money was allocated for this and fun­ding contract employment.

The medical staff would have been given housing and salaries.

Following this decision, officials in Uganda had sued their attorney general over the decision to export their healthcare practitioners, sta­ting the country was short- staffed and needed medical personnel.

Speaking with the Sunday Express on Friday afternoon, Khan said the arrangement Trinidad and Tobago had with Uganda had collapsed.

"The whole thing collapsed because the Ugandan government and (their) AG...I think something happened across there and, basically, it was creating a diplomatic furore, and I had to put it on hold because they were saying we should not poach from countries that don't have enough healthcare workers."

Told the Uganda court had ruled the workers can enter T&T to work, Khan said: "That's the court. But our (arrangement) fell flat because of the feeling of the World Health Organisation, stating we could not poach. It was something that was creating an unnecessary diplomatic furore," Khan said.

On November 29, the online East African publication carried a report headlined "Uganda AG sued over medical worker exports to Trini­dad", written by Michael Wakabi.

The report stated: "In a classic example of robbing the proverbial left hand to pay the right, the government of Uganda is recruiting over 250 medical workers for employment in Trinidad and Tobago, triggering what could be the country's, and probably East Africa's, first public interest litigation case against the medical brain drain."

According to the report, the Ugandan government failed to fill 42 per cent of positions in the health system and there was contention over its move to "give away" medical workers because many remain unemployed, years after graduating from college.

The report further stated a team from T&T was expected in Uganda last December to make a selection from some 450 applicants for employment for positions ranging from nursing and midwifery to medical specialists.

"In some cases, the country will be losing some of the handful of specialists that have been sustaining critical services in departments like oncology and psychiatry," stated the report.

"It says it wants to halt the recruitment exercise because it has serious implications for the delivery of health besides being a violation of the public's right to health," it added.

The Institute of Public Policy and Research (IPPR) initiated the legal action and challenged the court's order.

It sought an injunction in March this year to block what it described as a "violation of the right to health care".

Activists in Uganda have stated in the Ugandan media that they are plagued by a shortage of doctors, nurses and dentists.

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Gwokto La'Kitgum

"Even a small dog can piss on a tall Building", Jim Hightower

"But this I know, UPC believed and still believes in

very high education. We can call Obote all bad names we have, but the bottom line remains that he got more scholarships for Buganda than all previous Uganda leaders combined. That includes Sir Edward Mutesa, President Lule, President Binayisa, up to and into Ssabasajja Mutebi. Who all happen to be Baganda leaders." Mulindwa

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