On 25th May, Public Health Ambassadors Uganda (PHAU) held an online Dialogue to discuss the health budget of Uganda with respect to public health.
The Dialogue was moderated by Doreen Nyakato and had a number of panelists from various organisations like UNYPA,CSBAG, among others.
Considering that COVID19 has disrupted every aspect of our lives including our active and physical participation in the ongoing Budget Advocacy processes in the country, Youth Equality centre YEC teamed up with Public Health Ambassadors Uganda to hold a virtual Youth Health financing dialogue to engage Youth stakeholders especially on Alternative models of Health financing with special focus on sexual Reproductive Health and Universal Health Coverage.
It is well known that the budgeting process is one of the governance actions in Uganda that demonstrates Constitutional provisions of ‘Power belongs to the people’. While the country registers a 78% Youth population, the challenge of limited capacity of the youth to research, analyze Development policies and engage particularly in National Budget discussion still remains.
As premised on the above they hosted key stakeholders in the Youth sector programming to not only participate in this virtual forum but also share there perspectives on Health financing as we also validate our developed policy position papers on Alternative models of Health Financing for Uganda.
The health sector has continued to witness budget cuts over the past years. In FY 2020/21, the proposed health budget is UGX 1,550.4 billion indicating a whole shortfall of UGX 1,039.075 billion from the FY 2019/20 allocation which was UGX 2589.4 billion. Now such a decline is a threat to the human capital development.
Uganda is a signatory to the Abuja declaration where she pledged to allocate at least 15% of its national budget to the health sector; but the continued budget cuts for the health sector do not in any way represent that commitment.
The virtual consultative meeting targeted 30 stakeholders including youth advocates and activists from the following networks and organizations; Right Here Right Now, Public Health Ambassadors Uganda, Network for Active Citizens, AFRIYAN, Women Deliver Young Leaders and Uganda Youth Network among others.