© AP / Stephen WanderaSurvivors of recent mud slides stand next to a body in the debris at Sisiyi Sub County in Bulambuli district, Uganda, Monday, Aug. 29, 2011.
Separately, the Uganda Red Cross Society reported that mudslides and floods - which killed more than 50 people last month alone - have put the lives of 160,240 Ugandans at risk.
Up to 32,048 households across the country lack food and shelter, the humanitarian agency's spokesperson Catherine Ntabadde said.
She added: "The assessments indicate the current disasters include hailstorms, floods, landslides, food shortage, population movement and health related emergencies."
With protected water sources destroyed and flooded pit-latrines spewing human waste into water sources, health workers warned of likely outbreak of epidemics such as cholera and dysentery.
Bulambuli District in eastern Uganda where twin mudslides killed at least 31 people on Monday is one of the hardest-hit areas. Bridges connecting farmers to markets, pupils to schools and residents to health workers have been swept away by swollen rivers.
The rock and mud sludge which rolled down Mount Elgon during the landslides has blocked roads and cut off several villages, complicating accessibility even for relief deliveries. Now Bulambuli leaders say they lack resources and medical workers as demand for health services piles.
The district, which Chief Administrative Officer Grace Watuwa said civil servants avoid due to its rough terrain, has only one doctor who juggles his time between the health centres and as the District Health Officer (administrator). There are no medicines here though.
Bulambuli DHO, Dr Mpalya Mwiru Gidale, made a desperate plea for more health workers to be posted there and for a replenishing of dried-up medical supplies to cope with the overwhelming work alongside provision of counselling services for survivors.
It has a population of 192,000 and is situated on the steepest edge of Mt. Elgon, roughly 30 kilometres northeast of Mbale town.
One in every pair of required health worker in the new district has not been recruited.
Ms Watuwa said: "The district has about 47 per cent medical staffing and these are only concentrated in lower parts that are accessible while the upper parts of Bulambuli, where the biggest population is, do not have qualified staff, let alone medicine. "The disaster (mudslide) has exposed us; it has ripped us naked," she said.
In Kampala, State Disaster Preparedness minister Musa Ecweru said the scale of the disaster is challenging and tomorrow's planned meeting with partners will tackle "humanitarian profiling" to come up with an inventory of what response needs to be undertaken and by whom. "Relief can never be enough. We will do our best to ensure our own people do not die," he said when asked about specific assistance being determined for most needy populations across the country.
Mr Ecweru, who earlier told this newspaper that he would use yesterday's weekly Cabinet meeting to pitch for emergency funding, would not detail what government agreed to do.
Instead, he revealed that the Food and Agricultural Organisation has released "a lot of money" to World Food Programme to stock deliveries for hungry Ugandans.
With fears famine might set in as flood waters swamp farmlands, after massive crop failures due to drought, any indecision or delay in official action could exacerbate stress for disaster victims at a time when surging inflation at 21.4 per cent is pushing every citizen a step backwards on the welfare scale.
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