Devolution of federal hospitals to Khartoum State

After privatization included most of the public and government sectors such as water, electricity and education, the government has now decided to privatize the most important sector, which directly affects the life of normal citizens, the health sector itself.

          This week, the presidency has issued a presidential decree under which government hospitals have been affiliated to the states, which means the nine federal hospitals will be under the ownership of Khartoum State.

         Although the decision did not mention directly the word "privatization" yet devolution, I think, is a form of privatization, because when citizens of other states come for treatment in Khartoum State, they will pay at their own expenditure exactly as if they travel abroad for treatment.

The term "privatization" has been used to denote "any effort designed to strengthen the role of the market at the many forms such as divestiture and devolution. And they are all mean transfer of functions to lower government powers and jurisdictions."

         The danger of this decision lies in its negative effects on both citizens and hospitals because it will definitely lead to the collapse of the entire health sector in the country.

By this step, the central government intends to get rid of federal hospitals in preparation to privatize them, which affirm the allegations by experts that say the State, intends to stop the free treatment in the various states in the country, to become profit hospitals so that the patient pays the bill for treatment.

        Many doctors and specialists, who work at these hospitals and the medical field as general, have strongly objected and refused the move and doubted on its purposes describing it as a commercial process, and while they are claiming that their allegations based on real data and reports, the Khartoum Ministry of Health alleged that those doctors fear about their positions and interests!

       There is a well-known phrase goes "medicine is a humanitarian profession" so who do we believe and trust after this traded accusations between two parties representing the medicine field of the country!

      The government, since it adopted the federal governance in 1993 as a better option to succeed in managing a country with a size of a continent, had to develop the other states in order to achieve the self-sufficient for these states, but it rather damaged all the exist and potential recourses and after all that, it wants to prevent the citizens of these states from enjoining the services of the public sectors.

This issue as it was described by the Chairman of the Specialist's Society Dr. Mohammed Abdurazig, not less important in its dangerous consequences than the secession of the South.