Kiruddu Hospital By Prisca WanyenyaThe Executive Director of Kiruddu National Referral Hospital, Dr. Charles Kabugo, has decried the poor referral system in Uganda’s health sector, revealing that some patients referred to Kiruddu die within 48 hours after admission because of delayed referral from lower facilities.He made the remarks while appearing before Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee on 3rd November 2026, during a meeting held to consider the December 2025 Auditor General’s report.“I want to give you a statistic that the deaths that happen in many hospitals, including Kiruddu especially at the tertiary level, at national level, death occurs within about 48 hours of admission, 90% of the deaths occur within 48 hours of admission. What does that mean? It means this person has come in when they are very ill, you have not even given the system a chance to treat you. We have now known that if someone comes and they go through that window, the chances of recovery are definitely much better. It means that our patients are coming in very late in the disease. Please refer to the appropriate places,” Dr. Kabugo said.His remarks were in response to concerns raised by MPs on cases where patients’ ailments escalate when referred to Kiruddu, a situation Dr. Kabugo attributed to slow referral and poverty amongst patients who at times don’t have transport to come to Kampala.“Our patients are taking too long to be referred to appropriate care, sometimes when they come to us, it is a lost attempt. So, as we speak to our constituents, let us encourage early referral because people are seeking all forms of care and only think about coming to hospitals sometimes when it is too late. Even under the best of circumstances, you may not be able to revive this individual. So, the key thing I would really say is those who have fallen sick, please seek early treatment so that we have a chance to treat,” Dr. Kabugo added.Disease Burden Has ChangedMeanwhile, Kiruddu has decried the increased disease burden, with Dr. Kabugo revealing that Uganda’s burden of disease is no longer malaria and diarrhoea. The burden has changed to non-communicable diseases, yet these are very expensive to manage and require a big budget both diagnostically and for treatment.“We definitely need to up our game and have a bigger budget to be able to match the disease burden that we are seeing right now. We no longer treat malaria, in Kiruddu, we told National Medical Stores to cut down on our budget for malaria because we don’t see malaria cases, and that is not our mandate, we are not supposed to be treating malaria, we should be treating complicated cases,” he said.Dr. Kabugo attributed the increased burden to lifestyle, especially what Ugandans are eating and lack of exercise.“I have always mentioned that what we eat, for me, is one of the biggest contributors, the way the food we are handling, it is contributing. I will give an example. Look at the agriculture sector. Chickens feel sick, they are given antibiotics, the next day, they are on the market. Vehicles are polluting the environment; factories are polluting the environment. Regulation needs to be tightened,” he said.Angura informed the Committee that during a recent health camp in Tororo district where all medical facilities provided support staff, including Mulago, the team was ready to support the community to treat malaria but to their surprise, they registered below expectations in terms of malaria patients. However, over 3,000 people who came were having non-communicable diseases.“How can we help our people avert this situation of non-communicable diseases? You talked about diabetes is one of your specialities there, high blood pressure. What is that we can do to avoid the high cost of managing these monsters that are attacking our people? What is that a rural person can do to avoid being escalated to hospitals?” Angura asked.Dr. Kabugo admitted similar examples have been witnessed by Kiruddu.“And we are seeing a lot of cancers, every family has been hit with a cancer case. We have so many patients who are coming to us and they have kidney disease. We don’t know what is causing the kidney disease, we think it is what they are eating. Yes, the diabetes is contributing, but there are people who are not diabetic and they have kidney disease. We have young people, 20-year-olds. Why should a 20-year-old get kidney disease?” he said.Dialysis CrisisKiruddu also raised concerns over high demand for dialysis and diabetes services. Every Wednesday diabetes clinic, the hospital receives about 300 patients in one day, while on a daily basis, 80 to 90 dialysis sessions are conducted. These cases are complemented by numerous referrals from the 17 regional referral hospitals across the country.“Just to give you a picture, the kit that goes for you to do one session costs UGX350,000 per session, that is why the private sector charges UGX400,000. At Kiruddu, we charge UGX60,000 and this is not a cost recovery initiative, it is just encouraging people to contribute so that we can sustain whatever little we have and even those who don’t have the money are eventually given the service. Some of them will never pay. I can assure you that we have debts between millions and millions, and because these are Ugandans, you want to treat them, you can’t deny them the service,” Dr. Kabugo said.This was in response to questions raised by Karim Masaba (Mbale Industrial Division) and Sarah Lwansasula (Woman MP Jinja City) who asked what would be required for dialysis services to be accessed freely in government facilities.“I have had people from Mbale who failed to manage and I referred them at times to Kampala, but even if it is cheap, it is still… In your view, how can we make this service completely free? Because I think most of the people who come for this dialysis, they cannot afford to do transplant and they have to live on this service for the rest of their life, for years and years. So how do we make it completely free for these people of ours?” Masaba asked.The Public Accounts Committee was also informed that Kiruddu’s budget for dialysis has grown from UGX2.5bn to now UGX10.2bn, but the growth in budget has also seen growth in the number of kidney cases.“Our teams are still trying to investigate, why are the numbers of kidney injuries increasing? I wish I could show you our graph, you know the numbers were caught on a monthly basis, it is just going higher. We just definitely need to see a way of curtailing these numbers,” Kabugo said.Despite the increase, Sarah Lwansasula decried government’s failure to fully fund dialysis care, pointing out that in 2024/25, Kiruddu had requested for UGX48bn but only UGX10.8bn was warranted.“You know chronic kidney diseases are a major concern to Uganda and I don’t know for you doctors, maybe you may have an idea of why the rate of people getting these diseases is on the rise. But when the auditors visited, they found that you got just a quarter of that. You wanted UGX48 billion for that particular service, but you only got UGX10.6bn. If a patient is at a certain level, they should get dialysis three times, but doesn’t that leave patients coming less than the required time and in the end maybe we lose them?” Lwansasula said.She added, “Where I come from, Jinja Regional Referral Hospital does not have a dialysis machine and of course these have to be referred to hospitals like Kiruddu and Mbale. Now I am imagining someone who is coming to find hope in Kiruddu, because they are very sure that they will find these services in Kiruddu, but they can’t find them because of funding. How far have you gone to make sure that at least you have the budget for someone who’s coming from Karamoja to find the dialysis services?”Kabugo informed the Committee that Kiruddu has embarked on training and expansion of dialysis services in regional referral hospitals where satellite sites have been opened in Mbale, Lira, Hoima and Mbarara, while plans are underway to expand similar services to Arua and Jinja.“All of that is an effort to make the services more accessible, because you are supposed to come to hospital two to three times a week, many of these patients are abandoning their homes, and they are settling around Munyonyo. Living in Munyonyo, as we know, is very expensive, families have been drained. Members, none of us can afford to sustain a kidney patient here in the current situation. I have seen families sell their land to be able to sustain because in addition to the kidney, some of them have diabetes, hypertension. So, you have a complex of diseases that you are managing,” Dr. Kabugo said.The post 90% Die Within 48 Hours: Kiruddu Blames Late Referrals for Rising Hospital Deaths appeared first on Business Focus.