The issue of intern doctors in Uganda’s health sector requires careful and mature handling.

Firstly, it is important to note that the government regulates and controls internships, and interns are only allowed to train in accredited hospitals.

Secondly, the internship is a crucial continuation of medical training, without which medical graduates cannot work anywhere.

Thirdly, medical students undergo the longest training period, lasting up to five years. Therefore, denying them the opportunity to do an internship for a whole year is equivalent to rendering their long years of training useless.

Interns, like any other young people, have aspirations they want to achieve. After going through a grueling five years of medical school, it is unfair and inhumane to ask them to wait for an additional year before joining the job market.

If the government cannot enable them to do the internship, then it should consider liberalizing internship programs, just as it did with undergraduate training.

Failure to do so could result in half-baked doctors who could jeopardize the quality of medical care in the country.

Interns and Senior House Officers (doctors pursuing Masters programs) deserve to be remunerated for their labor since they work on the wards while also acquiring skills.

Typically, interns work 60% of the time and study for 40%. Senior House Officers cover most of the work in busy referral hospitals, where patients outnumber doctors.

Brutalizing them, as the police did, is unacceptable. These young doctors put their lives on the line to save the nation during epidemics such as Covid-19, Ebola, and Marburg, and they deserve better treatment.

I appeal to the President to address the issue of interns urgently. Failure to do so could send the wrong signals within the medical fraternity and have long-term consequences on the quality of medical care in the country.

First of all, the government controls and regulates internships. They are not free to go and do an internship in whichever hospital they want. They do it in accredited hospitals.

Secondly, it is a continuation of their training. After medical school, they can’t work anywhere without an internship.

Thirdly, they train for the longest period (5 years). So stopping them from doing an internship for a whole year is equivalent to giving them a dead year after the long five years. Any young person has dreams to reach. They too have. Imagine going through a gruesome 5 years at medical school and you are told to stay in the waiting lounge for one more year.  Very unfair and inhuman.

Either enable them to do the internship and join the job market or the Government should liberalize internships as you liberalized the undergraduate training and we reap the consequences of half-baked doctors.

On the issue of allowances for interns, it came about because interns work while on the wards. They do not acquire skills only but they work as well. If an intern doctor focuses on studying alone, he or she comes in the morning does the minimum prescribed procedures, and leaves the hospital.

But here they study 40% of the time in the hospital and work 60% if we were to look at their LOE(Level Of Effort). This same applies to Senior House officers ( doctors doing masters program). They cover most of the work in busy referral hospitals where patients far outweigh the doctors. So they deserve to be remunerated for their labour.

Lastly to the police. Shame on you!!!!. How do you brutalize those noble people whom you always run to when you are in a medical crisis with your wives, children, and mothers?

You break the same hands that you need to stitch you when you crush on those highway pick-up vehicles. Shame on you!!!!! Mwaswadde nyo.

Don’t be robotic that whoever is expressing him or herself has to be brutalized. Those same young people put their lives on the line to save the nation during Covid, Ebola, and Marburg epidemics and you reward them like that. You are shameless.