Mark Muhumuza

KAMPALA, UGANDA � There are few people who budget for their health in Uganda. This is according to Dr. Ian Clarke, the chairman of the International Medical Group (IMG).

"There are still few people who are planning for their health and including how much they spend in their annual budgets," Dr Clarke told East African Business Week.

"It is common that most of the people wait for a crisis to happen before and then they start looking for funding," he adds.

Uganda currently only has only private health insurance and the Ministry of health is yet to implement the health insurance scheme. Mocrocare health insurance scheme suffered a major setback after it could not be sustained due to low premiums that it offered yet the costs of taking of the insurance cover was very high. The Microcare section of insurance has since been bought by IMG.

However the insurance scheme still owes billions to some clinics around the capital, Kampala. People and companies are still contributing to health insurance schemes but with Microcare defaulting on payments people started staying away from the schemes. The government continues to provide health care services through its health centres and hospitals but people have long criticised the government clinics for not delivering.

The private clinics have also been shaking off their clinic status to become hospitals and thus have faced financial pressure and have transferred this to the end user with increased charges.

"The cost of medical healthcare in Kampala is relatively cheaper compared to Nairobi despite these health insurance challenges," Dr Clarke says.

The operating costs that are eventually transferred to the end user have kept these people away from budgeting for their health. Hospitals have therefore adopted other schemes known as Health Maintenance Organisation (MHO) which almost allows patients access hospital services for an agreed annual fee. These schemes are silently different from insurance because cover is for only a limited number of clinics.

However a bill in parliament could see these schemes end as the requirement would be for these schemes to be insurance firms. This may not be feasible as the minimum requirement for the insurance firm would be Ugshs5bn ($2.5m).