Red, Green, With Sprinkles on Top

No, it’s not a Christmas cookie – It’s how I would describe my early impressions of Uganda. The country is vibrant with colors. The earth is red, the luscious forests and farmlands are green, and the sprinkles represent the thousands of stars that are visible on a clear night. Today, we explored Uganda and ventured to the source of the Nile – Jinja. This is my second day in Uganda and more and more questions continue to enter my mind. At dinner tonight, we discussed access to healthcare with our two local taxi drivers. The premise of this conference is the healthcare worker shortage and I wanted to hear the viewpoint of the locals. Did they have access to healthcare services? Interestingly enough, the felt that care facilities were available and ample in the private sector. The major obstacle to care was cost. Is this a function of supply and demand? High prices due to limited supply? If there are more healthcare workers, will prices come down? We also talked about the ethics of providing free testing tonight. Is it better to provide free testing for diseases such as AIDS/HIV and malaria and leave treatments costs to the patient to resolve? Or is the onus on health facility – provide testing, a treatment plan, and medication? And if this solution is not available is paid testing, whereby the patient incurs testing costs if s/he wants to know, better than no testing?