State of Health in Pallisa – in looking at the health services in general, environmental health, health education, nursing, drug inspection, vector control, tuberculosis, immunization rates and morbidity and mortality from major diseases and data on available health facilities. The health department is mandated to provide adequate and accessible health services to the people of the district. The health mission is “Provide health services to all the people in Pallisa District and minimize disparities” Overall Goal of the department is to reduce mortality and morbidity in Pallisa District. 3.2 Health infrastructure (categories) by location and ownership. The district is divided into three Health sub Districts (HSD) of: Pallisa, Butebo and Kibuku HSDs. The district has 2 hospitals one of which is government owned- Pallisa Hospital located in Pallisa Town Council and the other NGO hospital- Kanginima Hospital in Kakoro Sub County. There are 2 HCIVs namely Butebo and Kibuku, all of which are government owned. Of the 25 HCIIIs, 20are government owned and 5 are NGO and of the 11HCIIs, 11 government owned while 2 are NGO.
Categories of health Centres in Pallisa District
Type of facility Government NGO Total
Hospital 1 1 2
Health Centre IVs 2 0 2
Health Centre IIIs 20 4 24
Health Centre IIs 7 4 11
Total 30 9 39
Source: DHOs office
The district has a very high doctor- population ratio of 1: 64,700, a nurse- population ratio of 1:7,677 and a clinical officer- population ratio of 1: 14,610. On the maternity side, the Midwives: pregnant women (15-49) ratio is at 1: 2,033. The women of child bearing age constitute 23% of the population.
Public and Environmental Health
The District is supposed to have 8 Health Inspectors but currently has 7 of them; 1 District Health Inspector at the district headquarters, 3 at each of the HSDs, 1 at Pallisa Town Council and 2 at sub county level. However it is important to note that the structure does not provide for the position of Health Inspector at sub county level. The Inspectorate division has been able to conduct 60 sensitisation meetings all over the district with an average of 3 meetings per Sub County. However, no building plans were approved by the division in 2007, although 260 food vendors were inspected in the same period. The division has also conducted 78 health programmes for schools and is yet to train the Village Health Teams (VHTs). The district has only 1 solid waste collection team which is maintained by the town council and mainly uses tractors for garbage collection and transportation. Although at the moment this service is not provided due to obsolesce of the equipment. On average the number of households serviced by 1 garbage collection point is 20 and this mainly depends on the structure of where they live for example slums, “bisakate” and residential. Due to the limited and non developed service provision for garbage collection there are no records of tonnage of solid waste generated and collected per day in the district. There are mainly two sanitation meetings held per month leading to a total of 24 per year. However this will vary depending on the health situation for example of late Pallisa has been hit by cholera and it has required the public health committee to have sanitation meetings weekly.
Latrine coverage
The pit latrine coverage stands at 65%, with only 10% of the households using hand washing facilities. 70% of the households have kitchens and 57% have bathrooms. When the records were compared with the previous ones it was noticed that there was a decline in the number of households that had both had a kitchen and bathroom and this was due to the end of the RUWASA project because:
- It funded the construction of both kitchens and bathrooms.
- It gave out logistics to the households that had these facilities.
- The field workers became handicapped because they did not have any facilitation for example food allowances and bicycles for transport to the various communities.
Also it’s been noted that the district heath inspectors don’t have motor cycles which are supposed to ease their transport to the lowest levels of the district to support supervision and sensitization process. It would therefore be of great importance for the local government to provide transportation means to the health inspectors to ease their work. The households that have water borne toilets and sewage lines are individually funded, this is because the district doesn’t have any water carriage system. Due to the lack of 24 the water carriage system the water borne toilets of Pallisa hospital have broken down and become obsolete making this a big problem to the hospital management. The high water cost also makes it hard for the population to acquire water borne toilets therefore pit latrines are the most commonly used toilets.
