The social & economic determinants of the public’s health in resource – limited countries; the case of Uganda.

Title : The social & economic determinants of the public’s health in resource – limited countries; the case of Uganda.

Abstract:

This review concentrated on the salient socio-economic factors that appear to impinge on the community’s level of access to appropriate health care services across the continuum of care. While there are varying access modifiers from an infrastructure dimension; there are a series of social & economic influencing factors that this study set out to investigate. Methodology: The study made use of the meta – analysis (desk review) of existing government and non – governmental publications and reports issued in the last 3 years; correlated information about national budget allocations to the health sector vis –a – vis the other sector budgets, sector performance reports. reports on poverty trends and the underlying factors, area of residence – related factors and quality of housing. Findings: It was established that national budget outlays portrayed some kind of limited importance attached to allocating sizeable funds to the health sector compared to other sectors; the health sector received only 4.1% of the total national budget 2024/2025 while in FY 2025/2026 it was allocated 8,1% only; community’s settlement patterns and area of residence played a big role in terms of accessing the basic social services with particular focus on health care, safe water & sanitation attributes. Conclusion: The emerging findings point to the fact that the responsibility owners bear a daunting task to re-think the way allocation of resources to the health sector is done; given the pivotal role it plays in the development arena. Some kind of affirmative action in this direction is essential and needs to be demonstrated at all levels of governance. The human resources for health dimension and health care facilities responsiveness to client needs require substantial attention from several fronts and the statistics speak to this. Nevertheless, government policies that enhance equal opportunity to all players is an area this study can highlight as requiring additional research.

Biography:

Joseph  Mubiru is a dynamic and free-lance research in the public health domain. His 25 – years of active service in the development and emergency settings while promoting Public Health gives him a mileage in the research domain. He mastered in Public Health methodology from the Universite of Libre Brussel, Belgium in 2000; thereafter he served in the health department of Rakai District Local Government as a Malaria prevention & control officer; later on he joined Malaria Consortium EA in 2003 to 2004 serving as the Emergency Liasason Ofiicer for Malaria prevention and control in the didplacd eoples camps in Northern Uganda; late on he joined UNICEF – Uganda and served as the Health & Nutrition Concultant in 2004; he worked under the Ministry of water & Environment in Uganda as a technical support officer trying to bring out the correlation between safe water & good sanitation and good health outcomes and subsequently trying to align to policies from an informed point of view. He went to Geneva Graduate Institute in 2017 where he qualified and was certified to undertake programmes with an Executive Global Health Diplomacy. He has participated in a series of studies both at the operational and active basis levels.