UGANDA COMPUTERS STOLEN http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/1181156/-/c0c5xlz/-/index.html

Thugs steal State House drug monitoring unit computers

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By Andrew Bagala  (email the author) 

Posted  Wednesday, June 15 2011 at 00:00

Kampala

Suspected thugs on Monday night broke into the State House Medicine and Health Service Delivery Monitoring Unit head offices and stole computers suspected to contain vital information on corruption investigations.

The Public Relations Officer of the unit, Detective Assistant Superintendent of Police Frank Byaruhanga, said: “We suspect that the thugs’ interest was not in the computers but in the information that was stored in them. Investigations have already started and we are sure that the suspects will be arrested soon.” So far no one has been arrested.
The unit was set up by President Museveni to investigate theft of drugs and medical equipment in public hospitals.

Since its establishment, the unit has investigated over 150 cases related to misuse of health funds, arrested and prosecuted over 100 health officers. Mr Byaruhanga, however, said they have a backup of the information that was stolen. “The stolen information will not impact on our investigations of high profile people in the health sector because whatever was stolen is in our backup computers,” he said.

The thugs failed to gain entry to the unit’s top managers’ offices, the officer said. 
Asked whether they did not have security at the unit offices by the time the incident happened, Mr Byaruhanga said the guard could have been asleep.

Uganda spends between Shs600 billions on healthcare sector annually but a big part of the funds do not reach the end users due to wide cases of corruption. The government is still investigating the Global Fund scam in which Shs1.6 billion was misused by Ministry of Health officials.