A fitting tribute to a passionate doctor

Prof Wamukota Memorial Medical Centre is currently the only health centre of Grade III or higher standard in Bumasikye Sub-county, until recently part of Busiu Sub-county. Better still, it has the capacity to serve many surrounding villages, some of them belonging to next-door Tororo District. But perhaps one of the best things about this centre is that it was erected in fond memory of the remarkable Prof Wilson Wamukota.

The centre which comprises two furnished and equipped modern buildings with a 500 KVA standby generator, is the work and gift of a handful of family members with the generous support of an American NGO, the Conejo Compassion Coalition in Uganda. It was last week opened at Wamukota’s home village of Lwaboba, Bumasikye sub-county, Mbale District.

Professional man
Prof Wilson Wamukota, (1931 – 2005), was up to the year of his demise, easily the medical doctor with the most accomplished track record in Bugisu region.

Prof Timothy Wangusa said this of the late doctor: “When I first heard of Dr Wamukota, being myself a young lecturer at Makerere University, he was described as the doctor who had studied medicine for seven years, and then for a further seven years on another continent! And that for the second set of seven years he had become a countryman of Jesus, and become fluent in Hebrew!”

Prof Wangusa says Prof Wamukota was trained on three continents, adding that here indeed was a physician who merged into one, some of the knowledge of the Africa of his nativity, of the Orient (Pakistan), of the Near East (Israel), and of colonial Europe.

He adds that the doctor was true to the Hippocratic Oath: He never advertised himself, never set up a medical clinic or subscribed to one, and always declined offers of money from his patients, telling them to go and buy with that money the medication he had just prescribed.

“The walking doctor,” as he was popularly called, was also never known to own a car or even a bicycle, but was forever on his feet crossing Katanga Valley to Mulago from Makerere University hill, where he resided for many years,” says Prof Wangusa.

But after he was one day knocked down by a speeding car between Wandegeya and Mulago, while on his way from work, his supervisors made available a chauffeured vehicle for his use.

Later on, it was said that he became sorry for the driver who sat around idly waiting for him, and permanently sent away both the vehicle and the driver.

The testimonies of some of his former students present at the commissioning of the health centre – who included his niece Dr Christine Watera and Dr Emmanuel Othieno, of the department of Pathology – portrayed a role model doctor of exceptional intellectual calibre, professional excellence, generosity to patients, and personal simplicity. “In the seminar room, seated at the back and listening to his students’ presentations, we were told, Prof Wamukota was hardly felt until some ill-prepared student made some unfortunate error, and then from the rear came a roar of disapproval – and they all knew he was keenly present in the seminar,” says Prof Wangusa.

Witty doctor
The doctor was always full of surprises. “The most unforgettable utterance that Dr Wilson Wamukota ever made within my own hearing was absolutely breathtaking,” Prof Wangusa says.

He was one evening socialising with friends at Makerere University Senior Staff Club, when the facility was still located in the Main Building, and in the middle of conversation at the bar counter, the late Prof Wamukota suddenly screwed his eyes on him and made his ecstatic pronouncement – “The moment we cut through a neuron of the central nervous system while maintaining the electricity flow, we shall cry, ‘Eureka! O death, where is thy victory?’”

“In that single animated statement, Dr Wamukota merged the spirit of Archimedes the Greek’s excited cry upon his discovery of the Principle of Floatation and St. Paul the Christian Jew’s shout of hurrah in knowing that Jesus’ resurrection had dealt death a conclusive blow!”

Prof Wamukota’s work-station at Mulago Hospital was at the exit end of life – which is where pathology, the scientific study of diseases and death, belongs. He was a permanent practitioner at Mulago mortuary, he routinely dissected corpses to establish the causes of death and convinced that some of the ugly deaths could have been avoided, according to his former students, he made himself a permanent staff member of Mulago’s Casualty Department on the third floor.

“That is the level on which the casualties of road carnage, drunken assaults, domestic violence, police brutality, etc arrive daily. And that was the place, more than anywhere else, where many of us, friends and colleagues who sought his expert treatment, found him,” says Prof Wangusa. He said with him, there was no leaving office with unfinished work and that when duty called, he even washed his clothes at the office rather than return home to carry out that domestic chore.

Working till the end
This is the rare physician who, upon retirement from active service with the university, went back to his home village of Lwaboba, took to looking after his cattle, keeping close to the community and nature, and occasionally giving medical treatment to the sick who came imploring to his door.

Prof Wamukota is now fittingly memorialised in stone and concrete, in structures and facilities dedicated to offering the medical services that were close to his heart.

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