Public Health

The remit of this Directorate is to work closely with other stakeholders to ensure the people of Kagera enjoy reasonably good public health services. Currently, these services delivery across the region is by and large dysfunctional for a number of reasons, not least the gross underfunding of health facilities. Sadly, the prospects for a turnaround in the short term looks like a chimera, given the government’s fiscal travails. Needless to say, labour productivity is a function of good health. A sickly person will always perform below his/her potential, something that has implications for the fight against poverty and deprivation.

The Directorate is charged with implementing preventative measures in concert with the local governments, so as to ward off infections of communicable diseases. Specifically, its presence must be felt and seen in the campaign against new HIV/Aids infections as well as the spread of malaria which is endemic in many parts of Kagera. On the curative side, an affordable health insurance cover must be found for the entire population to facilitate access to medicine. We have to step into modernity and put behind us such situations as mothers delivering babies in their homes and patients dying at home simply because they cannot afford to go to a hospital.

It is also the duty of the Directorate to tackle the scourge of malnutrition which is currently pervasive in Kagera. Kagera has to rid itself of its dubious distinction of being among the most malnourished regions in Tanzania. Malnourishment among children is posing risks of faltered growth, disease, impaired mental development, and death. The Directorate is mounting a campaign to sensitize people to plant vegetables and fruit trees and eat protein-rich foods like beans which they are good at producing but poor at eating, preferring instead to treat such foods as cash crops.