Uganda is often ranked as high in corruption in Transparency International (TI)’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). TI rates countries basing on a scale of CPI scores ranging from 0 to 10, where 10.0 is the score of the cleanest and 0.0 is that of the most corrupt country. Although Uganda’s position improved from 130th out of 180 countries surveyed in 2009 to 127th out of 178 in 2010, it retained the same CPI score of just 2.5 (Transparency International, 2010). Apart from Rwanda (score 4.0), other regional countries obtained comparable scores (Ethiopia 2.7, Tanzania 2.7, Kenya 2.1, DRC 2.0, Burundi 1.8, and Sudan 1.6). There are always accusations of lack of political will to fight corruption in government because it is perceived to be perpetrated by government officials and their family members, and supporters of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party. Corruption has become a “Kit”(Luo, a Ugandan language: Culture). In response to “Kit Corruption”, the government has created a number of institutions to fight corruption at different levels, such as the Inspector General of Government (IGG), and departmental units such as the Police Standards Unit (PSU) and the Educations Standards Agency (ESA). Reportedly, the health sector is one of the most corrupt sectors in Uganda, an image enhanced by a recent history of widely-publicised corruption scandals like those which affected funds from the Global Fund and Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI). Yet, the sector did not move to establish a sector inspectorate similar to those in some other reportedly corrupt departments. Brian Tracey, the famous Management specialist and teacher, often says that if you do not plan for yourself, you soon become a part of other people’s plans. The 2009 creation of the Medicines and Health Service Delivery Monitoring Unit (MHSDMU) by the president, to investigate allegations of all forms of mismanagement of health care resources in Uganda, was meant to fill this gap.

The unit was, however, received with mixed feelings in the country. According to the views expressed on the issue in the local media and health policy corridors, to some it was a final admission of the guilt that had always been denied by the ruling NRM party, of the existence of corruption in its government. To others, it was “too little, too late”,