Your Excellency,
Research from the Greater Ankole subregion shows a clear and troubling pattern; many beneficiaries of the Parish Development Model (PDM) are using the funds to pay medical bills rather than invest in production, trade, or household enterprise.
This finding is important. PDM and related economic empowerment programmes were designed to lift households and strengthen local economies. Yet when illness strikes, the money is diverted.
Families that receive support still face the same pressure that forces others across the country to organise fundraising drives for medical costs. In Greater Ankole and beyond, increased incomes and development funds are being consumed by health expenses.
Your Excellency, this is not a rejection of the programmes you have championed. It is evidence that their impact is incomplete without protection against catastrophic health spending.
Salaries are good. PDM is good. But when medical bills claim a large share of both, the intended economic gains are reduced. Households cannot build lasting wealth, local governments cannot fully empower their people, and the broader ten-fold growth strategy faces an avoidable obstacle
A national medical insurance policy would address this directly. A mandatory scheme—covering government workers and the wider population, with progressive contributions and subsidies for the poorest—would:
Free PDM funds and salaries for their intended productive use.
Reduce the burden of out-of-pocket medical costs on households.
Strengthen population health, which in turn supports productivity and economic growth.
Lower the pressure on both government and communities that currently rely on charity and emergency fundraising.
Rwanda’s experience with Community-Based Health Insurance (Mutuelle de Santé), which now covers roughly 89 percent of the population, demonstrates that such a system is achievable in our region.
Adapted to Uganda’s context, it would protect the gains of existing programmes and help both the government and ordinary citizens.
Your Excellency, you have guided the nation with long experience and a focus on practical solutions. Looking into a national medical insurance policy would complete the empowerment agenda. It would ensure that money intended for development is not lost to illness, and that the health of the population becomes a true foundation for the progress we seek.
The author is Kazo District Workers Councillor and General Secretary NRM Kazo District.
mugabe14lex@gmail.com