Jinja Regional Referral Hospital has been forced to spend heavily on transporting medical oxygen from outside the region after its oxygen plant broke down about four months ago, disrupting the facility’s ability to meet its own needs and supply other health facilities.
The plant has the capacity to produce up to 250 cylinders of oxygen a day, enough to meet the needs of the referral hospital and support lower-level health facilities across the region.
However, hospital director Dr Yayi Alfred said the prolonged breakdown has forced the hospital to transport oxygen from Namanve and Kayunga.
‘We hire trucks at Shs750,000 per trip, and we do that two to three times a week. This is costly for the hospital to sustain,’ Dr Yayi said.
He said the breakdown has also deprived lower-level health facilities of a reliable source of oxygen, forcing them to travel to Namamve and other areas to obtain the essential medical gas.
Dr Yayi, who is also the hospital’s senior executive consultant, said urgent intervention was needed to restore the plant so that it could resume supplying the referral hospital and surrounding health facilities.
He said the equipment is serviced by Global Gases, but the need to source spare parts from outside Uganda has contributed to delays in restoring the plant.
The concerns were raised on Monday, September 7, 2026, during a visit to the hospital by Parliament’s Health Committee, led by its deputy chairperson, Mubende MP Grania Nakazibwe.
The committee was assessing the state of health services at the facility.
Jinja City Woman MP Sarah Lwansasula said the prolonged breakdown of the oxygen plant was a concern given its importance to the hospital and other health facilities that depend on it.
‘Oxygen is a very critical service that should not remain unavailable for long,’ she said.
Lwansasula said the committee had asked hospital authorities to provide details of the service providers responsible for repairing the equipment and the authorities they were engaging to restore the service.
She said the explanation that spare parts and technical services had to be sourced from outside Uganda highlighted the need for locally available service providers.
‘If we can find providers within Uganda who can provide such services, it is much better,’ she said.
She said Parliament would continue pushing for increased funding to address challenges affecting health service delivery at the referral hospital, including the repair and maintenance of critical equipment.
Jinja West MP Timothy Batuwa Lusala, who is also a member of the committee, said that although transporting oxygen from Kampala to Jinja is costly, the arrangement has ensured that patients who require oxygen continue to receive it.
Patients who may require oxygen include critically ill patients, premature or sick newborns, mothers undergoing surgery, and people with severe pneumonia, respiratory failure or other conditions that cause low blood oxygen levels.
CT scan also down
The facility also faces challenges with its CT scan, which has been non-functional for about two months, forcing patients to seek the service from private facilities at a higher cost.
About Jinja Regional Referral Hospital
Established in 1930 to serve World War II veterans at Kimaka Barracks, Jinja Regional Referral Hospital was upgraded to a General Hospital in 1968 and became a Regional Referral Hospital for Busoga in 1995.
The hospital has a 500-bed capacity across its Main and Nalufenya Children’s campuses and operates 19 departments.
It serves 11 districts and Jinja City, with a catchment population of about 4.5 million people, while providing technical support to 10 general hospitals and 19 Health Centre IVs.
The hospital is severely understaffed, with 408 staff against an approved requirement of 1,261, representing about 32 per cent of the required workforce.
It handles about 12,000 general outpatients, 9,000 specialised outpatients and 3,000 admissions each month, and conducts about 500 deliveries, including 170 caesarean sections.