The Uganda Peoples’ Defense Forces (UPDF) Engineering Brigade has started renovating the intensive care unit (ICU) at Jinja Regional Referral Hospital.
An engineer at the site, who requested anonymity, said the renovation will take six months and will include expanding the ICU building, refurbishing the interior, reroofing, and painting. “What we are doing here is basically a comprehensive renovation of the whole ICU building, fitting it with the required amenities needed to ensure smooth operability of health workers and the general wellbeing of patients admitted to the ward,” he said.
Angela Namala, the acting Director of Jinja Regional Referral Hospital, said the ICU ward urgently needed repairs. She confirmed that four ICU beds had been relocated to the eye ward to handle severe patient cases during the renovation.
Namala explained that ICU admissions were previously low but surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the hospital began receiving about three severe cases daily. The Ministry of Health responded by supplying additional ICU beds. “We have now set up about four ICU beds to accommodate severe cases, whereas the other 11 beds will be properly stored, awaiting the full reopening of the ICU ward,” she said.
She, however, noted that the hospital continues to face a shortage of intensivists, the specialists required to manage ICUs. “The scarcity of such experts in the country, combined with the availability of lucrative jobs for them in the Kampala area, has made it difficult for us to attract them here,” Namala explained.
Namala added that some hospital staff were trained by senior intensivists during the peak of COVID-19, and those skills are helping to manage current cases as they await new recruitments. “The skills acquired can ably meet our patient demands, as we await the recruitment of expatriates in this field,” she said.
The renovation is expected to improve patient care once the ICU reopens fully.
