{UAH} Govt hospitals have become death traps

Iganga hospital

When I look through the dozens of lies Kaguta Yoweri Tibuhaburwa Museveni - the president of Uganda since 1986 - is trading for votes in his campaigns across the country in a bid to further extend his rule, the most infuriating one is that there is medicine in the government hospitals accessible for free to all Ugandans.

These government hospitals are death traps and every sensible and responsible citizen should take Tibuhaburwa's word with contempt. If government hospitals are functioning well and are for free, according to Tibuhaburwa, why then are citizens opting for private hospitals where everything is paid for, including consultation?

Back in July, my wife and I entered the gates of Iganga regional referral hospital to seek for the highly campaigned free services. We were welcomed by a fleet of nonfunctioning ambulances which occupied the largest part of the humongous parking lot, and then nice-looking buildings erected on almost a square kilometer of land.The nicest of all is a mortuary. In my heart I was like, these government structures look nice. I asked myself why we had been wasting money in private hospitals when all along there had been such a nice facility. Little did I know that the facility is like a succulent ripe pawpaw being wheeled on a barrow down town but when sliced open, you are welcomed by rot and or squirming maggots!

When we entered the maternity ward, there were hundreds of women, ensconced on the benches, hungering for the same services like us.

We were late but because I had escorted my wife, unlike others, we were given the first priority on top of heaping encomiums on me for being the only man who accompanied my wife for antenatal, which responsibility some other men often dodge.

Firstly, the hospital had no gloves. The midwives showed me a pharmacy right opposite the gate to go to and buy a pair of surgical gloves at Shs 2,000. I took it with equanimity and forked out the money, thinking that maybe they were out of stock and that the government had not supplied.

When I returned, I found a man whose wife had been brought in, in excruciating pain. She had been sent to do a scan at a clinic, also opposite the gate. I was infuriated. The whole hospital doesn't have a scan? No gloves?

When the scan results came out, it was found that the woman had no amniotic fluid in the womb and that the seven-month-old fetus was in imminent danger; so, the only solution was to remove the premature baby. The man had only Shs 150,000 in cash with him, which he said he had gotten from selling his only goat.

But the doctor who was to work on his wife had zeroed on a certain amount of money before operating on the woman. This is the doctor who is paid a salary by the government but because it is either a small amount or he is greedy, he charges his extra fee in a government facility which is supposed to be for free.

Recently, when I escorted my wife back to the death trap-cum-hospital, she was given iron and Folic tablets to swallow up to when she gives birth, and also a tetanus injection. After several days of swallowing the medicine, we realized that it had actually expired!

I have been here asking myself how many illiterate villagers are given or injected expired medicine at the government hospital dispensary and obediently swallow it thinking that they would recuperate. Many die because the medicine becomes non-effective.

Such deaths and effects that come with swallowing expired medicine must be blamed on the government. In early 2018, my father started complaining of stomachaches. He stopped eating because whatever he could swallow would be ejected immediately and 'hospitals' around were diagnosing peptic and gastric ulcers, and he would be put on syrups and tabs. He started eating medicine as his food.

His condition deteriorated later that year and we took him to a private hospital where endoscopy was done and the results were that the liver had become damaged because of plumes that had built up in there and eventually attracted cancer.

The doctor who did the diagnosis emphasized that if we had realized the problem earlier, he would have been saved but because of medical malpractice, the condition in which the organ was, was irreversible. Sadly, my father died in September 2019 of the same.

The doctors in government hospitals were giving him medicine for ulcers yet he had a liver problem. The people who send us to these hospitals have no faith in them. That is why they fly to Europe, India and USA to seek medication at the expense of taxpayers' money and leave such death traps for poor Ugandans.

More than 34 years later, Tibuhaburwa is gallivanting the country, campaigning to extend his rule. One wonders; what is it that he is going to do in the next five years that he has not done in the last 34?

In other words, his achievements in 34 years of presidency should be enough to compel citizens to vote him again instead of inhumanly fighting against those who think he hasn't done anything apart from the inexorable avalanche of maladministration, corruption and human rights violations, among others.

The writer is a novelist and a resident of Iganga.

--

"When a man is stung by a bee, he doesn't set off to destroy all beehives"

--
Disclaimer:Everyone posting to this Forum bears the sole responsibility for any legal consequences of his or her postings, and hence statements and facts must be presented responsibly. Your continued membership signifies that you agree to this disclaimer and pledge to abide by our Rules and Guidelines.To unsubscribe from this group, send email to: ugandans-at-heart+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ugandans at Heart (UAH) Community" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ugandans-at-heart+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ugandans-at-heart/CAFxDTfpN09B%2B8bzpdDMM5_ERnpFYegvpdYMPcP80DV49XBB7aQ%40mail.gmail.com.