Dr. Diana Atwine, the Permanent Secretary at Ministry of Health
Uganda received 2 million newborns in 2025, Ministry of Health has revealed.
Dr. Diana Atwine, the Permanent Secretary at Ministry of Health made the revelation while appearing before Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on 2nd April 2026, during the scrutiny of the 2024/25 Auditor General’s report, where she admitted that the growth in population isn’t being matched with the growth in health services.
She also attributed the exponential number of patients in public health facilities on the improved services in Government hospitals and health centres, revealing that recently, some non-for-profit health facilities complained of losing customers to public health facilities.
However, Ministry of Health admitted that access to health care in Uganda is being threatened by the low staffing levels with some regional referral hospitals staffed at as low as 28% or less, and informed the Committee that the trend is likely to change after the Ministry of Finance agreed to provide additional wage to increase staffing levels in Uganda’s health sector to at least 50%.
Dr. Atwine’s remarks were in response to concerns raised by MPs on the low staffing levels.
Patrick Nsamba (Kassanda North) noted that the low staffing levels has contributed to the congestion at regional referral hospitals, because most of the cases could be handled at lower level facilities, had they been adequately staffed.
Sarah Opendi (Tororo DWR) raised concerns over the Ministry of Health’s failure to attract consultants, even in health facilities that are a few hours away from Kampala.
Dr. Atwine also informed the Committee that the low staffing levels and failure to attract specialists is impacting on the training of medical students, especially interns who are meant to undergo training at regional referral hospitals under the watch of consultants and senior consultants, but the failure to attract these specialists in regional referral hospitals has impacted on quality of training these intern doctors are obtaining.
The Ministry of Health called for intentional training of medical specialists, with Dr. Atwine revealing that there are positions even when advertised, they hardly attract candidates because there aren’t people specialised in certain fields.
