Rather than debate policies to boost efforts to combat NCDs and find a solution to the lack of a national health insurance policy for all, MPs on Tuesday opted to fault sambusa and chapati for health issues
Parliament on Tuesday fingered sambusa not to tear away the famous triangles for eating but as one of the contributors to health complications.
A minister died from complications related to heart attack last week and the good parliament feels snacks like sumbusa, chapati and mandazi should be kicked out of sight.
Deputy Speaker Thomas Tayebwa urged MPs to take their health seriously, encouraging them to go for medical checkups - which is the basic thing anyone with Shs20 million in monthly salary and comprehensive health insurance should do.
But the clincher was Mr Tayebwa's next statement - a suggestion that legislators reconsider dietary habits within the parliament.
"We need to rethink how we live. I believe we should remove mandazi, chapati, and even sugar from our breakfast package and instead provide cassava and water," Tayebwa said.
While a standard health advice, it remains a classic case of nibbling at the poor sambusa and flogging it for good measure, all for the sins of health complications.
For a parliament that has mastered the art of reactionary politics, something was bound to happen but not even ball-dribbling Prophet Kakande or the seer in Elvis Mbonye would have foreseen that sumbusa would take the flak for former Kisoro Woman MP Sarah Nyirabashatsi Mateke's shock death.
Kasilo County MP Elijah Okupa spoke about earlier parliaments where every morning, there was a team ready to conduct basic health checks, such as monitoring blood pressure, for MPs.
This has been regressed on. And doubling up on Mr Okupa's nostalgia, Pakwach District Women MP Jane Pacuto asked the leadership at Parliament to organise mandatory medical checkups for MPs, and "have doctors come regularly to Parliament".
In nibbling at the sambusa instead of munching it, the legislators are tiptoeing over one of the most critical health issues in the country: the lack of a comprehensive health insurance policy.
The crude joke in the country is always that it takes the death of a 'big man' or their loved ones for those charged with advocating for a better service delivery to charge their batteries.
"Mabira [forest] case, that road will only be fixed if, God forbid, a minister or some important person perishes in that spot," said one of the government officials in a grim assessement of how things really work.
A stretch inside Mabira Forest has been in such a sorry state and claimed several accidents and lives over the last two years but despite the highway being the major gateway to Kenya, authorities have never even made any attempt to pepper over the crators that have consumed the road.
Cue that this is the same stretch that as many as 144 legislators - the most of any region - use regularly to commute back to their constituencies.
Eastern Uganda has the most number of MPs at 144 or so than any other region and with Karuma Bridge closed to traffic and many travellers to north-eastern Uganda also forced to ply the Mabira stretch, the mockery is loud.
Yet presented with the opportunity to push forward for a national health insurance, the legislators have acted like they are the only ones who can die from these non-communicable diseases.
Ideally, Parliament should have been addressing the issue of NCDs with the attention it deserves, that Mr Tayebwa should have led his brood in the house to demand a national health insurance policy that would ensure that the hundreds who die everyday in similar cases such as of the late Mateke are considered too.
Speaking about the National Health Insurance Scheme in 2022, the chief executive of the Insurance Regulatory Authority, Mr Ibrahim Kaddunabbi Mukasa, said the issue still remains a subject that everyone should be interested in for the advantages it carries.
He said in terms of enrollment, health insurance is currently the fastest growing class of insurance business in the country.
"It has gained appeal for most corporate organizations over the years," he said.
But then the good insurer Kaddunabbi Mukasa added that the uptake of health insurance is less than 1% in Uganda.
Yes, one-percent!
Many Ugandans are struggling with high out-of-pocket health expenditures, which have forced people to sell their properties to pay for healthcare. Kaddunabbi Mukasa noted that this was very much pronounced during COVID-19 pandemic where relatives of people who contracted the virus had to sell off assets to pay hospital bills and this has contributed greatly to keeping people in poverty.
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There are also instances where some people have lost lives because they cannot afford the huge out-of-pocket healthcare bill.
The usual car wash and other fundraising efforts always follow and while they show how caring the Ugandan communities are, they expose the gaping hole in the national health insurance policy or ather the inexistence of one.
The sore thumb that sticks from the southwestern neighbours where a community-based health insurance scheme, Mutuelle de Sante, has a national coverage of over 93% and serves the common man so well will always leave Ugandans in shame.
But because the parliament is only reactionary and does so when one of their own has become part of the grim statistics, Uganda is stuck in a living coffin.
Parliament needs to grab the sambusa and share it with the people to munch over a more proactive debate on a health insurance policy and combating NCDs.
And this should not be pegged down to a minister's passing on, it should be a national issue for death is the leveller who doesn't know status.
