Karimojong abandon dead relatives

MOROTO- Moroto Regional Referral Hospital is stuck with unclaimed dead bodies, rotting away due to lack of refrigeration at the facility, after relatives scared of the corpses, fled.

The decomposing bodies, which reportedly numbered 17 by last week, were of elderly persons and children.

Among the Karimojong, Uganda’s nomadic community in the north-east of the country, corpses are dreaded and hospital authorities say caretakers often abandon admitted relatives when their condition fails.

In the latest case, Moroto Hospital officials said the bodies had stayed in the mortuary for about five month, emitting a horrid stench. Some nearby businesses, mostly restaurants, were forced to close as the foul odour spread and clients deserted.

Our correspondent observed the unsettling sight of maggots crawling in and out and huge blue flies buzzing at the mortuary doorway when he visited on Wednesday, last week.

Hospital and municipal officials traded accusations when asked to explain why the unclaimed bodies had not been buried at a public cemetery as required under public health and safety laws.

“We are not comfortable about the bodies rotting in the hospital and the challenge is that as a hospital, we do not have a burial ground where we could take these unclaimed bodies to bury,” said Dr Philbert Nyeko, the director of Moroto hospital, adding: “It is [Moroto] Municipal Council to take that responsibility.”

Mr Moses Lorika, the assistant town clerk of Moroto Municipal Council, which bears the responsibility to bury unclaimed bodies, blamed the hospital administration for delaying to inform them about the decaying corpses.

“It is the fault of our colleagues in the hospital [for failing] to inform us early, but [now that] we have got the information, we are mobilising the fuel [transport] to collect those bodies to bury them,” he said.

The hospital administrator, Mr Geofrey Mawa, said this was false because the hospital always informed the urban authority in time and in writing but the latter complained of financial constraint.

This is not the first time that the Karimojong abandon corpses of their relatives at health facilities or public spaces, according to Moroto mayor Alex Lemu, who blames the unconventional practice on local culture.

He said: “The problem is our people who have a bad attitude towards a dead body. Even when it is their own child dying, they all run away [something] which we the leaders must fight against.”

A former Moroto hospital staff separately told this newspaper that they routinely monitored both the in-patients and their relatives to ensure neither vanished, and the latter were compelled to promptly pick up the bodies of their dead relatives.

Mr Lemu implored his kinsmen to “stop running away from bodies of their relatives,” a practice he called a “curse”.

Jinx
The latest developments show a hospital, the only referral in the Karamoja sub-region, struggling to break free from its past jinxed by insecurity, staff shortage, blighted structures and drug stock-outs.

For instance, doctors and other health workers shunned posting to the facility, preferring in some cases to remain unemployed, even with the enticement of a higher salary plus an allowance for working in a hard-to-reach area.

Officials said the sewerage system was for long dysfunctional, lighting problematic, diagnostic equipment lacking, and nomads unable to reach their homes by nightfall frequently forced to sleep on the hospital beds, leaving at daybreak.

And professionals brave enough to take up jobs at Moroto hospital left sooner, citing the hostile attitude of the patients and harassment by political leaders, which combined with lack of basic medicines making it difficult to save lives.

Brought to limelight

The matter of run-down public health facilities, which is common across the country, became an election issue after Dr Kizza Besigye, the Opposition Forum for Democratic Change party presidential candidate, visited Abim hospital in Karamoja sub-region.

The visit, which rattled government, exposed blighted infrastructure, dilapidated hospital beds and a nurse on duty said they had had no doctor for six years.

The revelations prompted police to deploy at health facilities to block Opposition politicians’ visit, and the Electoral Commission promptly listed hospitals alongside schools and churches as no-go areas for candidates during the ongoing campaigns.

In Moroto, the government had, before Besigye’s Abim hospital visit, injected Shs25 billion to upgrade the 320-bed capacity referral hospital for, among other things, the construction of a modern, storey block accommodating at least 60 of the 166 staff. A new out-patients wing can handle up to 500 patients each day.

According to the hospital management, the hospital has been spending Shs70m annually on rent for staff, but the expenditure has significantly reduced following the construction of new staff houses.

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