Results obtained from a recent analysis conducted by the Health Ministry indicate that Kampala International University and Mbarara University of Science and Technology are the only top recipients of medical intern placements for the 2024 internship program.
KIU secured the highest number of placements with 437 interns, closely followed by MUST with 270. This contrasts sharply with Makerere University, Uganda’s oldest higher education institution, which saw only 194 of its interns being deployed.
A report by the Ministry of Health shows that out of 2,706 medical graduates who were set to be placed in the internship programs across the country, only 1,596 have so far been absorbed into health facilities. This now leaves 1,110 medical graduates in limbo. The development is informed by the constrained funding and inadequate capacity within the nation’s health facilities to take up all the eligible interns.
The heavy allocation of KIU has raised eyebrows, with critics arguing that the university might not be in a good position to train such huge numbers of interns. The Ministry of Health, in response to criticism over the high number from KIU, clarified that the large numbers from KIU are attributed to a backlog of graduates awaiting placement.
While decisions were being made on deployment, President Museveni has admitted that financing medical internship was costly. He advised that the sponsors of the medical students needed to shoulder the internship programs in order to ease the burden from the government.
In light of the decision made by the Ministry of Health, debates over the matter up to now between the medical graduates and members of Parliament turned out to be very intricate since financing the internship program is still a running problem.
