Because of stinking corruption in the Ministry of Health, President Yoweri Museveni announced the establishment of a health monitoring unit whose job is to unearth the rot in the ministry with a view of bringing to book all those involved in the corruption that has bedevilled the ministry for so long leading to untold suffering of Ugandans and of course deaths.

Over the years we have grown to know that you can never expect to find medicine in our hospitals. The medicines are not in the hospitals and health centres because they are not meant to be. No. The medicines are not there because they have been stolen by the workers.

Every financial year, monies are budgeted for and availed to the ministry of health for the purchase of drugs. Often times the drugs are purchased and distributed to all health centres throughout the country.

Some of the budgeted monies are of course stolen lby some individuals iving limited resources for the purchases of all the required drugs.

The tragedy however is that even the little that reaches the health centres, is stolen and sold to private clinics and private pharmacies who sell the drugs at a price that can not be afforded by every one.

The result is that those who can't afford to buy life-saving drugs are left with no alternative but to die. Something had to be done and to be done fast.

Not only was a unit born to apprehend the criminals that have failed the country for years, they appointed a woman whose investigations and subsequent actions have been sending shivers down the spines of drug thieves.

In the short period of time that Dr Diana Atwine has been in charge of this unit, not only has she unearthed ghost health centres throughout the country, she has arrested the culprits, impounded the medicines stolen from government hospitals and health centres, impounded stolen and smuggled drugs from the neighbouring countries, impounded expired drugs on sale, and apprehended thugs selling fake medicines.

Of course it may take a long time before Ugandans can access medicines they require at the hospitals, but the thieves now know it is no longer going to be business as usual. Those that have been caught in crime are in jail. What a change!

Criminals live in our midst. We know them but we have in the past looked away because whenever they have been reported to the authorities, it has been the whistle blowers that have ended up being terrorised by the criminals. This lady therefore restores, at least, some faith in the minds of Ugandans that united in purpose, it is possible to take on criminals and defeat them.

What the country now needs is many Atwines. We badly need similar units in all government departments if we have to make a serious dent on corruption in government. But most importantly we need in charge people who hate corruption because corruption literally means destruction.

We might do well to remember the slogan of one of the candidates in the just concluded presidential elections in the Philippines: "Without corrupt officials, there are no poor people." That candidate is the new president of the Philippines. blog comments powered by Disqus

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