the state.131 Their frustration was palpable during our field work. Many complained about being treated poorly by health professionals or dealing with understaffed health facilities or health centre staff who spent their mornings tending to their own gardens and were not present at the health centre. There were accounts of corruption, for instance the practice of drugs being smuggled out of public health facilities and sold to private drug shops. People complained of having to sleep on the floor of health centres because there were not enough beds. And health centres can be far away, especially if one requires specialized care. One man described how expensive it could be to access health services: It is difficult because of the long distances involved and money. Here, motorcycles are very expensive. They are robbing us. These boda boda men, if they know it is a health issue, they just tell you fifty thousand shillings. From here to Looro Health Centre III it is fifteen thousand Uganda shillings (15,000 UGX). From there, if you are referred to Amudat Hospital, it is fifty thousand shillings. If the complication is severe and you are referred again to Matany, it is two hundred thousand Uganda shillings (200,000 UGX). The best services, it was felt by many, were private services. One person stated the problem bluntly, “If you have no money here, you die.” Figure 22. A records office in Buliisa. Chased away from the health centre The health workers we surveyed were very open about the fact that the primary purpose of the national ID was to identify who was Ugandan and who was not. In other words, the health workers we interviewed saw Ndaga Muntu as a tool of exclusion, to ensure that healthcare benefits only went to ‘real’ Ugandans. One nurse told us, “to my understanding, I think the government wants to work on Ugandans because they don’t want foreigners to benefit.” Another said, “here, we have very many Congolese and so they want to reserve medicine for Ugandans; so these Congolese try to get National IDs.” Another said, “It helps in fighting crime because whenever you ask for a national ID card from a criminal, they are turned away [leave] for fear of easy identification.” This sense of suspicion was confirmed by many individual interviewees. One person told us, “without an ID, they think you are coming from Kenya.” 54 Chased Away and Left to Die