State Minister for Planning, David Bahati
Government doesn’t have the funds to purchase kits to carry out countrywide mass testing of COVID-19, Uganda’s State Minister for Planning, David Bahati has revealed.
Bahati made the revelation while responding to Cecilia Ogwal (Dokolo Woman), who took to the floor of Parliament today appealing to Government to conduct mass testing following surge in number of COVID-19 cases in the country.
“I want to appeal to Government for mass testing for COVID-19. There is a sharp rise of infections and every day I wake up the figures are changing upwards. The Minister of Health said already some health workers have tested positive to COVID-19. People aren’t taking SOPs as prescribed from Ministry of Health. The masks which were ordered for the general population haven’t arrived in Dokolo,” Ogwal said.
She added: “The Government must come up with a cheap option of mass testing of Covid-19. It would be proper for each of us to walk to the nearest health facility to get tested rather than just sampling.”
Although Bahati recognized Ogwal’s call as one of the matters being handled with National Task Force on COVID-19, he said the exercise requires a lot of money which isn’t available at the moment.
“This requires mass testing, resources and to acquire the reagents and kits. The availability of these test kits is an issue. At the moment, we continue to do what we can to do; the testing, but to say we are going to test every Ugandan, this is something which isn’t possible at the moment. We need resources to be available in terms of finances; we can’t get all the required kits,” Bahati said.
Speaker Rebecca Kadaga asked Minister Bahati to ask the members of the National Taskforce on COVID-19 not to limit their activities and decisions within Kampala, but move to other parts of the country and see how the Standard Operating Procedures are being carried out.
“I don’t know if it won’t be appropriate for members of the task force to get out of Kampala, go to the districts, go to radios and speak this message,” Kadaga said.
Geoffrey Macho (Busia Municipality) tasked Government to account for the COVID-19 funds and donations, arguing that lack of accountability has not only attracted questions but also speculations.
Gilbert Olanya (Kilak South) said it seems “we have no capacity to carry out mass testing. We don’t know where the money is. Recently we were told money was stolen, by who and how? We need to be serious on mass testing of our people in order to save lives.”
