Dramatic scenes played out on Monday morning at Parliament Avenue and Mulago as police grabbed and arrested pre- medical interns engaged in a spirited procession to parliament.
The interns assembled at Mulago guest house to discuss the need for deployment to different medical facilities.
The group of over thirty members split into two groups clad in white laboratory coats carrying placards soon started marching across the streets of Kampala, headed for parliament, to petition the speaker over government’s failure to deploy them.
The protest is part of a week long social media campaign initiated by cartoonist Spire, dubbed Uganda Health Exhibition. The week-long campaign is addressing critical factors that need action in Uganda’s health sector.
The interns carried placards reading ‘President should intervene, health sector is bleeding’, ‘interns are not students’,’ health is our right’ among others.
The group that was swiftly surrounded by men in uniform telling them to call off the spirited protests started chanting; “We are peaceful, we are fighting for you,” .
Police officers in Wandegeya unsuccessfully tried to control the crowd that got rowdy when a police truck arrived to pick them up. Multiple police officers engaged in running battles with the crowd grabbing their pants by the trousers as they were bundled onto the truck and whisked off.
Over thirty internship sites were supposed to have received new interns by April 1st, 2023, but this has not yet happened due to issues with the training process, which the Ministry of Health is still consulting on.
The interns had planned to move into two separate groups, with one group starting at the National Theater in town and the other at Mulago to proceed to parliament. Police arrested twenty interns at Parliament Avenue and detained them at the Central Police Station in Kampala.
Others arrested from Mulago were detained at Wandegeya Police Station.
Dr. Herbert Luswata, the Secretary-General of the Uganda Medical Association (UMA), said that they had contacted their legal team to find out, which medical interns had been arrested and to process their release on bond.
