Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni and the Aga Khan last week laid the foundation stone for a state-of-the-art teaching hospital that is expected to reduce the costs Ugandans incur in seeking healthcare abroad.

The Aga Khan University Hospital, to be built on Nakawa hill in Kampala city, will be part of an integrated healthcare system in East Africa dedicated to providing high-quality healthcare, education and research.

The first phase of the teaching hospital — expected to end in 2020 — will cost $100 million.

“Essentially, we are trying to build a network of tertiary care hospitals, teaching hospitals throughout East Africa. We are trying to add to that network of teaching hospitals, medical units which are partly educational system but which will become referral institutions to our major network institutions; our hope is that over the years we will have a system covering East Africa where an individual needing care will be able to enter the system at any point and receive the appropriate healthcare, whether it be in Uganda or in Kenya or in Tanzania or even further afield,” said the Aga Khan during the land grant ceremony in Kampala.

He expressed the hope that the hospital would contribute to a reduction in the brain drain currently being experienced in Uganda.

“Uganda has doctors and nurses who are successful in their professions but who are not in Uganda. It is my hope that by building the Aga Khan University Hospital here in Uganda, the wonderful doctors and nurses who are Ugandans, who are working outside Uganda, will come back and work here in an institution that not only will welcome them but give them the best professional conditions in which they can work,” he said.

Speaking during the laying of the foundation stone, President Museveni explained that the quality of hospitals in Uganda suffered after his government prioritised prevention and the fight against diseases like polio and measles, which reduced money to run hospitals, hence the collapse of the healthcare system and an exodus of skilled medical workers. 

Ugandans with medical complications spend thousands of dollars in seeking specialised treatment, mostly in the United Kingdom, Germany, India, South Africa and Kenya.

Uganda’s Prime Minister Ruhakana Rugunda said the completion of the 600-bed hospital would change this trend of medical tourism.

“We believe that with investments such as this, and many others by the government and other private sector actors, we shall soon be able to have all healthcare needs attended to from within Uganda, with no need to spend time and money going for treatment abroad,” he said.

The government says it will now focus on improving the quality of hospitals, which is why it has provided six acres of land in Nakawa division in Kampala, as its contribution in a public private partnership with the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN).

The Aga Khan said the hospital would give people in the developing world access to international standards of healthcare.  The plan is to establish an Aga Khan Health Network in East Africa with hospitals that are both teaching and referral hospitals. Being a non-profit making institution, this network will seek to treat everyone who needs care, bringing a form of equity into Uganda.

The Aga Khan Health Network (AKHN) will pay special attention to non-communicable diseases like diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, mental and neurological illness and cancer. These diseases contribute to the increasing number of Ugandans going abroad for treatment.

Modern facility

The hospital will have a modern intensive medical care unit and will use modern medicine to perform complicated procedures like non- invasive surgery.

The Aga Khan University Hospital is expected to offer hands-on training — teaching medical students using the latest technology while offering high class treatment to patients simultaneously. At the start, it is presumed that it will admit 100 students from all over the world, but gradually it will grow.

“The purpose of a university hospital in Uganda is not only to serve Uganda, but East Africa and Africa in bringing in knowledge and competence in sophisticate science on an ongoing basis,” said the Aga Khan.

“The difference would be that right now if you took the College of Health Sciences at Makerere University,  essentially we are giving skills to future doctors with a university hospital, you also, alongside the school you have high class treatment,” said Sandy Stevens Tickodri-Togboa, Minister of State for Higher Education, Science and Technology.

“We think that has been missing in our national referral hospital Mulago hospital, which is basically focused on treatment. Technology develops very fast and it is