The Executive Director of Mulago National Referral Hospital, Rosemary Byanyima has revealed plans by the Hospital to expand its organ transplant services by embarking on liver transplants in April 2025.
She made the revelation while appearing before Parliament’s Health Committee, where she was presenting the Hospital’s 2025/26 Budget Framework Paper.
She requested the Committee to ensure that all funds for the critical medicines and supplies are availed in the budget in order to ensure that these transplants go on smoothly.
“We want to increase our scope of organ transplant. We want to bring on board liver transplant. We have been working with hospitals in India, but we are now getting another team on board through Health Education England, and this is from the hospital in Manchester, and it’s the team that is coming around April and May 2025 to do transplants with us,” said Dr. Byanyima.
Byanyima also warned that if all the UGX101Bn for the purchase of medicines isn’t availed in Mulago Hospital’s next year’s budget, the Hospital will be forced to keep sending patients to buy their own medicines and reserve the other medicines for the critically ill patients that require medicine by their bedsides.
“If we are to have no patients walk out to buy any medication, we would need Shs101Bn, and currently, we are receiving UGX18.256Bn, so we will continue writing lists for patients to go and buy, and we get, of course, backlash from the public. But you know, the areas of concern are those who are critically ill where you need to have the medicines by the bedside,” explained Byanyima.
In vitro fertilisation
Dr. Evelyn Nabunya, Executive Director of Mulago Specialised Women & Neonatal Hospital has revealed that the government has finally started offering fertility treatment services like the In vitro fertilisation (IVF) with already 11 stimulations having been carried out, while two women are pregnant following this procedure.
She made the revelation while appearing before Parliament’s Health Committee where she was presenting the Hospital’s 2025/26 Budget Framework Paper. She went on to detail some of the achievements the facility has registered in the past six months.
“Some of the achievements we have had in their first half is the starting of the long-awaited IVF services. As we stand, we have already done a total of 11 stimulations. We had six embryo transfers; five are awaiting while the embryos are frozen as they are prepared better.
Two of these patients are still pregnant; two were clinical pregnancies; however, they were lost. But we are hopeful as we are moving on with our team,” explained Nabunya.
Nabunya also informed the Committee that 858 neonates were handled, and of these, 32.9% were preterm, 75 were weighing below 1 kg, and their survival rate was 59.1%. “So babies even less than 1 kg are being looked after and surviving. Those between 1-1.4Kgs were 88, and their survival rate was 79.4%, while those 1.5-2.4Kgs had a survival rate of 87.3%.”
She further explained that the survival rate for those considered normal weight was on the lower side compared to those bigger preterm because these babies are received at Mulago Women Hospital while they are very sick and are mostly transferred from the other hospitals like Kawempe National Referral Hospital and the private hospitals that transfer these babies directly.
“Our smallest surviving baby was born at 24 weeks and weighed 500 grams, just like this bottle. That baby is now a healthy 2-and-a-half-year-old baby. This is a baby who survived retinopathy of prematurity because of the vigilance of the team. These babies are exposed to prolonged oxygen, and they are in danger of getting blindness. So these babies survived that; it was detected early,” noted Dr. Nabunya.
