Uganda Parliament Speaker Jacob L’Okori Oulanyah’s reported evacuation to Seattle, USA for medical treatment has triggered a predictable backlash. The reported payment of $500,000 to Uganda Airlines to fly him to America has been the focus of the angry reaction from a society frustrated by chronic exploitation by the ruling elite.

While the money spent on Oulanyah’s transport and healthcare is a big deal, it is not news to those who have kept an eye on the health tourism of the high and mighty in Uganda. Oulanyah’s story, albeit dramatic, may well not be the most expensive spending on the health care needs of one individual. 

For obvious reasons, I cannot mention names of public servants whose health needs and treatment I am privy to.  Suffice to say that many high-ranking officers of the Government of Uganda and its agencies, and many of their relatives have enjoyed state-of-the-art health care in the USA, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, India, Thailand, Turkey, Dubai, Kenya, and South Africa. The costs have been variable but high, with some who have had major chronic illnesses costing the Ugandan peasant hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

Now, I note that the Acholi Parliamentary Group has offered to refund the cost of Oulanyah’s airfare. It is a noble, though impulsive, anger-driven gesture that Ugandans should welcome and encourage the MPs to honour as soon as possible. However, if money alone be the consideration, the cost of caring for Oulanyah and other select citizens is a drop in the large ocean of wasted or stolen public money for which the government is not censured by Ugandans. 

Consider this: In the same week that Ugandans reacted to the Oulanyah travel cost, the International Court of Justice ordered Uganda to pay $325 million in war reparations to the Congo Free State. There appears to have been a collective yawn before people moved on to other concerns. Yet this is a cost that ought to arouse the interest of Ugandans and trigger demand for answers and consequences. 

Just as we demand to know why spend the obscene amount on one man’s healthcare, we should ask what that war, fought in the Congo Free State between 1998 and 2003, was about? Who ordered that war? Who looted and abused the Congolese people? What, besides paying $65 million annually for the next five years, can Ugandans do to penalise those ultimately responsible for the expensive madness? 

Unfortunately, these are boring questions that are not likely to exercise parliament and the public’s mind. It is just like the ease with which we forget the auditor general’s annual reports that faithfully document the misuse, the looting and general wastage of billions of shillings by the most corrupt set that has ruled Uganda since independence.  Indeed, many victims of the robbery by state officials, will be ready to sing “no change” at the next pretend election. They do not seem to link the corruption and waste with their poor heath care and other social services. It is also lost in a fog that appears to be of interest only to opposition leaders, social media and newspaper commentators.

 On the other hand, Oulanyah’s treatment cost is immediate and easy to understand. It appears to be more wasteful than $325 million paid to a country we pillaged years ago. The smaller amount involves a man whose predicament we can relate to. I could just as easily develop whatever it is that has immobilized Oulanyah. If it hits me in Masaka, Moyo, Gulu or Jinja, in Kabaare, Arua, Mburara, Mbale, Nakaseke or Mulago, I am doomed to a painful death in a sad hospital with leaking toilets, rationed oxygen and other pitiable offerings. So, the $500,000 spent on him triggers outrage because of the injustice to me. The outrage is immediate and personal. That’s how the human mind works.

Now, let’s be honest, Tingasiga. You are seriously ill with a treatable condition. President Yoweri Museveni winks in assent to your request for evacuation to Europe or North America. You would grab the opportunity, would you not? 

Interestingly, though you are a passionate pan-Africanist, you would not consider going to Kenya, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, or Morocco, countries that offer very good health care services. You have this false idea that medical care is better out here because the professionals in these parts are supposedly better than those at home. 

Yet most human illnesses, including very serious ones, can be safely and effectively managed at Mulago and other public hospitals in Uganda, if only a few pieces of equipment and the right professionals were mobilized. Uganda has some of the finest world class doctors right there at home. There is nothing magical about doctors and other healthcare professionals in the developed countries. 

The health professionals in Canada, UK, USA, Dubai and so on are well facilitated to do their job. They have physical, material and information resources at their disposal to enable them to apply the very same knowledge and skills that their Uganda-based colleagues have. Their governments respect and listen to them as experts in their fields. They are paid very well, so they do not need to search for supplemental income to survive.

The bottom line is this, Tingasiga: We need a mindset change, founded on three simple questions. (1) Is the life of one Ugandan more valuable than that of another? (2) Is Museveni’s life more important than that of Mburaburiirwe, a peasant potato farmer? (3) Is it better to spend a million dollars on the health care of two politicians than on the rehabilitation, equipping and staffing of the medical department at a regional referral hospital?  

This mindset change must start at the top. The ruler and his courtiers need to: (1) consider state of the art health care a human right for all citizens; (2) acknowledge that the lives of Yoweri Museveni and Thomas Tayebwa, MP, are not more important than those of Drasiku Onzia, a herdsman, and Lucia Zawedde, a market woman; (3) invest their personal and public funds in Uganda’s health services to benefit all citizens, not a few anointed ones; (4) only seek health care abroad, at their own expense, for very rare conditions that require super-specialised services at a few centres in the world; (5) offer Ugandan professionals at home salaries and other support to attract the best to the public health care facilities; (6) abolish private health care benefits for all public servants.  Drastic? Yes. Necessary? No option.