The Director of Jinja Regional Referral Hospital, Dr Alfred Yayi, has appealed to the government to allocate Shs500 million for the facility to initiate dialysis services for patients.
Yayi, emphasized that this funding would alleviate the long travel times and traffic congestion that patients currently face when seeking these services at Kiruddu Hospital in Kampala.
Yayi made the request on Monday while appearing before Parliament’s Health Committee to present the Hospital’s 2025/26 Budget Framework Paper estimates.
He highlighted the growing demand for dialysis services and mentioned that an organisation is ready to provide the necessary machines but that the government only needs to extend funds for the required reagents.
“Patients travel every week to Kiruddu for dialysis services and there is a huge demand on us to start providing these services,” he said.
“We are partnering with some organization they are ready to give us the equipment and we have the space, but we need resources for reagents and utilities so that we can provide these services at slightly a subsidized cost,” Yayi said.
“So on behalf of the people of Busoga, we would request for at an allocation of at least Shs500m to support dialysis services that we want to start as soon as possible,” he added.
Additionally, Yayi requested funding for the construction of boreholes and water harvesting systems to help mitigate the high water bills that have left the facility in a state of chronic arrears.
Dr Yayi noted that the water shortage has been worsened by outdated infrastructure, which has led to numerous leaks and increased water costs.
“We want to overhaul the plumbing system and that requires Shs300m. We have a huge problem of arrears especially for NWSC and we need support to establish motorised borehole and improve on water harvesting and also improve on the issue of overhauling the plumbing system because what is happening is that we are losing a lot of water through the leakages because of the old systems.”
