Mulago National Referral Hospital is finally trying to do liver transplants. The boss there, Dr. Rosemary Byanyima, spilled the details. They are teaming up with Yashoda Hospital over in India to make it happen. This would be a first for Uganda. They already have a bunch of patients from their clinics who desperately need new livers. Doctors from Mulago have been sent to India and the United Kingdom for a month of crash course training. Once they get back, they will start picking which patients can get the surgery. The place has done three kidney transplants already, which they are pretty stoked about. Everyone from those operations is doing okay.
Do not get too excited yet, because the whole thing is basically held together with duct tape and hope. Byanyima is begging the government health ministry for way more cash. She said they are running these transplants like a temporary camp, pulling staff from other units when needed. For it to work all the time, they need dedicated people getting paid real money. The funding situation is a complete joke. They get a tiny fraction of what they actually need for basic medicine from the National Medical Stores. Their total budget for patient drugs is less than a quarter of the real requirement. That shortage means families often have to go buy supplies themselves. The hospital is also seriously understaffed, only hitting about half of the personnel they should have.
In some marginally okay news, a doctor named Jane Nakibuuka said Mulago scored some ISO certificates. That is a standards thing from the Uganda National Bureau of Standards. It covers their quality system, their environmental rules, and their worker safety setup. They got it after making some changes to try and make the hospital run better. It is supposed to help them keep a baseline level of service and not get in trouble with regulators.
Do not get too excited yet, because the whole thing is basically held together with duct tape and hope. Byanyima is begging the government health ministry for way more cash. She said they are running these transplants like a temporary camp, pulling staff from other units when needed. For it to work all the time, they need dedicated people getting paid real money. The funding situation is a complete joke. They get a tiny fraction of what they actually need for basic medicine from the National Medical Stores. Their total budget for patient drugs is less than a quarter of the real requirement. That shortage means families often have to go buy supplies themselves. The hospital is also seriously understaffed, only hitting about half of the personnel they should have.
In some marginally okay news, a doctor named Jane Nakibuuka said Mulago scored some ISO certificates. That is a standards thing from the Uganda National Bureau of Standards. It covers their quality system, their environmental rules, and their worker safety setup. They got it after making some changes to try and make the hospital run better. It is supposed to help them keep a baseline level of service and not get in trouble with regulators.
