Uganda has so far spent over 14 million dollars on COVID-19 tests ever since the disease outbreak, the ministry of health has revealed.
According to Dr. Henry Mwebesa, the Director-General Health Services, the funds have been used on the over 216,000 COVID-19 tests that have so far been conducted in the country.
Of these tests, 75% have been done on foreigners especially incoming truck drivers.
“When we were analyzing the cost which we have incurred in testing foreign truck drivers it is 10 million dollars out of the 14 million dollars, so we can see we are spending a lot more on the people coming in than our own people in this country. Am not being selfish but certainly, that is not something we can be proud of” says Dr. Mwebesa.
He wants the East African community to pursue the pretesting of truck drivers strategy as per the arrangement to be able to relieve Uganda of the burden.
Dr. Mwebesa made the remarks today during the official commissioning of two fully-fledged Mobile laboratories held at the ministry of health headquarters in Kampala today.
While officiating at the function, the Minister of Health Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng said the Mobile laboratories which are equipped with modern equipment and can diagnose most pathogens including COVID-19, Ebola, Acute viral hepatitis, Measles and Rubella among others were donated by the East African Community in April this year.
She said these were immediately deployed to border points with a lot of human traffic to speed up testing for the coronavirus.
The mobile labs have so far made 22,000 tests according to the ministry.
Meanwhile, Minister Aceng revealed that as of today, Uganda has cumulative number of 1,000 COVID-19 cases, 904 recoveries and 210 people on admission.
