By Charles Achoda
The Minister of State for Education and Sports in charge of Sports, Peter Ogwang, has cautioned universities and health education training institutions against admitting students who do not meet the required academic standards.
Ogwang, who is currently holding the portfolio of the Minister of Education and Sports, says that such admissions and practices compromises the quality of Uganda’s health workforce.
Speaking at the official opening of the technical orientation engagement for the leadership of Universities offering health programmes held at Esella Country Hotel on Wednesday, Ogwang said that the government will no longer tolerate the commercialization of medical training.
“Our being here is to address a pivotal national milestone, the operationalization of the National Education and Training for Health Policy, 2025. This policy is a document beyond its availability on the library shelves. It’s a blueprint to build a global competitive health workforce.
For too long, we have seen a gap between policy intentions and classroom realities. This mismatch directly affects healthcare delivery. Therefore, the need for our universities to transit immediately from policy awareness to complete operational readiness,” he said.
“This policy shift brings critical new structural responsibilities that you must champion. First, we must harmonize entry requirements across all higher education institutions to ensure uniform high-quality intake standards without compromise,” added Ogwang.
The Minister also urged health education institutions to revolutionize approaches to clinical internships
“Internships are no longer just a post-graduation routine. They are an integral extension of institutional training. Therefore, it’s your responsibility to build robust coordination mechanisms with teaching hospitals so that every student transitions seamlessly into a well-supervised high-yield clinical environment”, the Minister said.
He said as primary implementers, heads of education institutions must audit their current capacities.
“We liberalized education, but we cannot liberalize standards. Can you tell me how one university or institution admits 30% to 31% of all medical students in this country? That is not acceptable”‘ the Minister said.
Citing concerns raised at the highest level of government, Ogwang said President Yoweri Museveni had questioned how candidates who fail at Senior Four and Senior Six levels end up in medical and nursing schools.
The Minister framed the issue as a debate between quantity and quality, stating that he would prefer 40 well-trained graduates to 80 who “go and ruin the name of the university.”
The Minister stressed that the guideline moving forward must be quality, not numbers.
“We must standardize who qualifies to go and be trained. Who we can export. Who we can trust with a patient at 2am and not everybody,” he said.
The mminister says that the new directive is part of broader reforms to align Uganda’s medical training with global standards and ensure graduates are fit for both local and international deployment.
