The Uganda Medical Association has blamed last week’s Jinja Hospital accident, in which a premature baby lost its arm in a Caesarian Section operation, on a lack of supervision for intern doctors in government hospitals.
The newly elected Leadership of the Medical Association Dr. Richard Idro said following an investigation, the baby’s arm could have been saved if there was a senior doctor for the intern to consult.
“We found that, the unfortunate incident was most likely a result of very difficult operation which was done under extreme pressure to save the mother ,the lost of the limbs was occasioned by the doctor pulling on the arm of a premature baby in a bid to deliver this baby and pulled the baby out of the womb,” he said.
He noted that it is possible that the outcome could have been better if the procedure was supervised by a more senior doctor but the circumstances at that time required that it was done only by the intern.
He said annually the ministry of health receive unplanned numbesr and ever increasing number of graduate doctors for internship without much financial and human resource investment.
“There is no coordination between the ministry of education which oversees the training, the training institutions, that is the medical schools, the national council of higher education which credits these medical schools or alignment of the number of doctors who are coming out with available training sites and the number of supervisors at these sites,” he said.
Dr. Frank Asiimwe ,the chairperson welfare Uganda medical association proposed that all the same exams done by the these medical schools should be the same to avoid favorism.
“We think and we are proposing that the final exams in the fifth year should be the same like we have UNEB , all medical schools are about 8 in number .they should do one exams because as we have had some universities may want their students to pass and so they might get their students actually to pass,” he said.
He also accused some medical schools of lowering their distinctions so that their students are able to pass well and the the only way to checked all that is when the exams done are the same.
