Uganda’s decision to invest Shs 180 billion in PET scans and nuclear medicine at the Uganda Cancer Institute deserves applause.
It is the kind of investment a country facing a growing cancer burden should make. But the real measure of success will not be the day officials commission the machines. It will be whether, five or 10 years from now, a Ugandan cancer patient can still walk into UCI and find the equipment working, the necessary supplies available, and qualified professionals ready to use it.
That distinction matters. UCI registered 8,764 new patients in 2025, 10 per cent more than the previous year, while outpatient visits reached 67,000. The planned facility will have three PET machines and a cyclotron to produce the radioactive tracers required for PET imaging.
This is a serious investment in a health system confronting increasingly complex demands. Yet buying advanced medical equipment is the easier part. Keeping it functional is harder.
A PET scanner cannot transform cancer care simply because it sits inside a modern building. It needs trained specialists, technicians, reliable maintenance, tracers and the wider diagnostic and treatment system around it.
When one component fails, an expensive machine can quickly become an expensive monument. Government therefore needs to think beyond procurement. Maintenance contracts, replacement parts, recurrent budgets, specialist training and retention of qualified personnel should be treated as integral parts of the Shs 180 billion investment, not problems to be solved after commissioning.
The same principle must extend across cancer care. As a UCI doctor correctly cautioned, “A PET scan goes hand in hand with other diagnostics, including laboratory diagnostics and other imaging diagnostics.”
A suspicious PET result may still require a biopsy before cancer can be confirmed. Government should therefore ensure that laboratories, pathology services, radiotherapy, medicines and other essential equipment are functional and adequately staffed.
It makes little sense to diagnose disease with greater precision if the next stage of treatment becomes another bottleneck. Encouraging evidence suggests the government understands this wider challenge.
The project includes nuclear medicine treatment facilities, a SPECT scanner, interventional radiology, endoscopy and colonoscopy suites, while cancer centres are being developed in Arua, Mbale, Mbarara and Gulu.
That broader approach must be sustained. Technology also cannot compensate for late diagnosis. The Shs180 billion investment offers Uganda an opportunity to build something more important than a PET scan facility: confidence that sophisticated public medical infrastructure can work, endure and serve ordinary people.
The ribbon-cutting will be the easy moment. The real achievement will be a decade from now, when the machines are still working, and Ugandans who need them can still receive the diagnosis and treatment they came for.