Out on bail in a manslaughter case, caught mid-operation in a residential house: the Shs 1 million surgery for a condition Mulago doctors could not find

Uganda licenses doctors through the Uganda Medical and Dental Practitioners Council (UMDPC) and health facilities through district and national inspection, but enforcement has long lagged behind the spread of small private clinics around Kampala. In December 2025 a joint raid by the Ministry of Health, the Allied Health Professionals Council and the State House Health Monitoring Unit showed how far an unlicensed operator could go, even after a previous arrest.

According to Nile Post (10 December 2025), officials found Henry Francis Kadaga performing surgery on a pregnant woman at an unlicensed clinic trading as "Mulago Health Medical Center International" in Kawempe Division. Officials said he had told her relatives she urgently needed an operation for a pregnancy complication and demanded Shs 1 million; when she was taken to Mulago National Referral Hospital, doctors confirmed she had no serious medical problem. The raid team reported a refrigerator containing blood, assorted drugs and a loudspeaker, and three women who had already undergone procedures. Two alleged accomplices fled. Kadaga, who had been released on bail, was taken into police custody to face fresh charges while two cases remained pending against him at Buganda Road Court, one involving the death of a woman after a botched delivery.

The Health Journalists Network Uganda (HEJNU, 11 December 2025) reported that the clinic was inside a residential house, that Kadaga had told the patient she had appendicitis which Mulago doctors found no evidence of, that officials suspected illegal abortions and the removal of three uteruses, and that the equipment included an uncertified operating bed. Kadaga reportedly said he had paid people who promised to help him obtain documentation; officials said none was found. He was held at Wandegeya Police Station. HEJNU set out the earlier case: a 37-year-old nursing officer died during a Caesarean section at a clinic in Mulago on 4 September 2025, a friend complained to the Health Monitoring Unit five days later, and Kadaga and others were remanded to Luzira Prison by the Buganda Road Chief Magistrate's Court, with three of them charged with manslaughter and conspiracy to commit a felony. Michael Mubiru Kayizzi, who led the December operation, said it was part of a wider effort to close substandard facilities and stop fraudsters posing as medical workers. Dr Charles Tusiime of the UMDPC told Nile Post that some patients were being diverted from recognised facilities.

The mechanism had two parts. First, a loudspeaker advertising surgery pulled patients out of the formal system. Second, nothing in the bail conditions or the licensing regime physically stopped an accused man from opening another theatre in a house in the same Mulago area as the national referral hospital, and his reported claim to have paid people for documents suggests he was buying promises of paperwork rather than holding any licence.

For students and families the lesson is to treat any private clinic that advertises surgery as unverified until proven otherwise. Check the facility's licence with the district health office and the practitioner's name on the UMDPC register, be suspicious of a diagnosis that comes with an immediate cash demand, and get a second opinion at a public hospital before anyone operates.