MULAGO HAS ONLY 2 FUNCTIONAL ICU VENTILATORS! Auditor General Finds 5 of 7 Dead, All 77 Sampled Machines Faulty

Five out of seven ventilators mounted in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at Mulago National Referral Hospital are not working, in what has emerged as a disturbing finding in the Auditor General’s (AG) latest examination of the country’s biggest public referral hospital.

The discovery has raised fresh questions about the condition of critical medical equipment at Mulago, where patients with life-threatening conditions depend on specialized machines to sustain their dear lives and support complicated medical procedures.

According to the AG’s report for the financial year 2024/2025, auditors examined a sample of 77 pieces of medical equipment at the hospital and discovered that none was fully functional.

Thirty-nine were completely non-functional, while the remaining 38 were only semi-functional.

The report attributed the failure of all the 77 machines to failure to maintain, suggesting that the equipment had deteriorated without the necessary maintenance interventions.

Mulago’s Accounting Officer, Dr Rosemary Byanyima, reportedly told the AG that most of the non-functional equipment had become obsolete and therefore required replacement.

But Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is now demanding more than explanations about obsolete machines.

When Mulago officials appeared before the Committee on Monday, Deputy Chairperson Sarah Lwansasula, the Jinja City Woman MP, ordered the hospital officials to provide a detailed technical account of every dead machine. Full PAC inquiry session can be viewed in video form via this YouTube link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npmOMjV31Xw Lwansasula wants the hospital to disclose how much each piece of equipment cost, where it was acquired from, how long it has been dead and the particular fault affecting it.

Management must also establish whether the equipment can still be repaired, has become obsolete or is otherwise beyond use.

PAC intends to study the technical submissions before considering a physical inspection of the equipment.

The ventilator revelations are extremely worrying because these machines provide breathing support to critically ill patients who cannot breath on their own.

The question now confronting Mulago management is whether the machines can be restored through repairs or whether taxpayers must meet the cost of replacing equipment that has already failed, after being mishandled by the hospital management, which failed to service the equipment accordingly. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).