A section of medical doctors who started reporting for internship on Friday are complaining about the unfair deployment to centres that are either hard to reach or inappropriate to some of them for personal reasons.
They argue that previously the Ministry of Health (MOH) would release its deployment list and allow them between two to three weeks to provide feedback on whether they will report to specific centres or not.
Dr. Ritah Nakitto, who only delivered last week through a caesarian section, says her complaint to be changed was rejected. She had asked to be changed from Hoima regional referral to Masaka regional referral hospital near her home.
Dr. Leonard Mutebi, an aspiring president for the Federation of Uganda Medical Interns (FUMI), says that he has heard many such cases recently including those that try to use influence to be deployed in facilities such as Mulago Regional Referral hospitals, which is preferred by many.
Dispelling claims of corruption and favours, Dr. Charles Olaro, the Director of Curative Services at the MOH, says up to 1800 medical interns have been deployed in this lot. He explains that if they were to ask each one of them to choose where to train from, some centres would have been flooded with trainees defeating its purpose.
According to Dr. Olaro, an internship is supposed to give graduates a feel of what the job market requires and therefore they follow standing orders where a public servant should be able to work from wherever they are deployed.
He says each of the 49 accredited internship sites across the country has been evaluated to offer the best experience for young doctors. Olaro says that while deploying, they follow the criteria of having four interns per supervisor in the various disciplines that they train in including Surgery, Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynecology.
However, while the government insists on no changes, interns are asking that they allow them to switch at the colleague level such as those that are in Gulu and don’t want there can identify those in other areas and change at the individual level.
Medical Interns are to train for a period of one year.
–URN
