AUDIO: When a dog replaced a patient at Mulago

Christine Nyakatura was a nurse at Mulago hospital when a doctor opted to save the life of a dog to a patient who had been on the theater waiting list. Photo by Henry Lubega

Her sister’s mistake of conceiving while in school cost her a chance to join Trinity College Nabbingo. But all was not lost for Christine Nyakatura, who went on to work with some of the top brains in the medical field in the country. Now a retired nurse, she recounts the 1956 incident when a dog was operated in a human theatre in old Mulago Hospital.

While in junior school, my elder sister conceived. This annoyed my father so much that he decided not to pay school fees for me to join secondary school fearing that I would end up like her. Thus, after my Junior Three, my father advised me to find a job and start working.
I went to the Omukama Sir Tito Winyi for help; he summoned one of his favourite sons Kato, my cousin, and asked him: “what can we do for your sister?” Kato said he knew a one Dr Musoke who was then in charge of Hoima hospital. He secured me a job there as a ward maid. But after six months at the hospital in 1952, Kato helped me join Mulago Nursing School.
At the training school there were two sets of nurses, those being trained in Luganda and those trained in English. I was in the English group. The Luganda group was for those who had stopped in Primary Six and did not go to Junior School. Majority, if not all of them, were from Buganda and Busoga sub-regions. Yet the colonialists wanted nurses, they used interpreters in training this group.

Our trainers knew how to spot potential and talent, and in my class they spotted me, Christine Ndagire, and Racheal Kanyoma. They put us on special coaching in preparation for specialised ward responsibilities.

At the end of the three-year course, my friend Kanyoma was retained at the training school as a trainer, Ndagire was put in charge of the medical ward while I was deployed in the theatre. We immediately specialised in our career.

In the theatre I worked with a number of prominent doctors such as Prof Kyalwazi, Prof MacAdam and Dr Christopher Bossa, among others.

Meeting Kabaka Muteesa
One evening around 7pm I was in the theatre with Dr Bossa, a very good surgeon. He asked me to prepare a sterile drip to be used to give an antimalarial injection. Those days, the malaria injection dose used to come in powder form and you had to be an expert to mix it otherwise, if not properly done it would lead to paralysis.
Afterwards, Dr Bossa asked me to join him in his car, and drove off to Nakawa Gombolola headquarters. We entered a house where there was Sir Edward Muteesa and other kingdom officials.

Dr Bossa and Muteesa were contemporaries. I was in my official nurse uniform carrying my tray, Muteesa asked, “and who is this”, I said I am nurse Nyakatura and he told me to kneel down, I told him I can’t because I am a princess.
He laughed; but the others didn’t say a word.

Dr Bossa then told him what had brought us. He moved to another room and I injected him. I found him very friendly unlike what other people had portrayed him to be. This was my first time to meet him.

The next time I met him was during dinner at my friend’s Rhona Kibuuka Musoke’s residence in Naguru. He remembered and asked me, “are you not the nurse who gave me the injection”, and I said yes.

Dog operated in human theatre
As my political activism intensified an incident happened at the theatre in old Mulago that I could not let pass without bringing it to the open. I witnessed first hand discrimination of the blacks by the whites.

We had a blackboard where we recorded people ready for operation. One Friday there was a woman who should have been operated on by the shift that was coming in after mine. She had a high fever and a complication that brought pus in the tube.

When Dr Kasasa (the first Muslim doctor in Uganda) and I went off duty that evening, we knew the incoming team would operate on the woman. When I reported on Monday I found her name off the list. I asked the nurse why that patient had not been operated on. She told me that Prof Rendal Short had cancelled her operation to operate on her dog in the theatre of old Mulago.

I was shocked. I ran to Stephen Semakula, the telephone operator, and I asked him to connect me to Dr Kununka at “Uganda Eyogera” newspaper and he told me to go over. He took me to A.D Lubowa the editor of the paper, I narrated what had happened. He ran the story in the paper and it caused uproar when the public got to know what had happened.

The Muslim community headed by Prince Badru Kakungulu and a host of other Muslim leaders, a Muslim minister from Buganda called Male came to see the medical superintendent. The top surgeon of the hospital Prof MacAdam apologised.

The Muslim leaders demanded to cleanse the theatre. For a full week it was closed for cleansing including performing some rituals and repainting the walls. Before this incident, I had applied for a scholarship to Britain, and shortly after I was off to Britain for a three-year course.

Political activism
Around 1956, I got interested in politics because of the way the colonialists were treating Africans. We were not allowed to enter certain shops such as Daimat and Cold Storage shop, leave alone buying certain goods such as spirits. But as nurses we were asked to attend to them at the whites’ only hospital in Nakasero. This kind of discrimination made me turn to Dr Kununka who had teamed up with John Karekezi, Gen Kale Kayihura’s father. I had also studied with Karekezi’s sister Mukandoli at the nurses training school though she left before completion when she got married to Paul Bitature, a radio Uganda broadcaster. I must say Karekezi was a good nationalist, he liked Uganda much as he was not a Ugandan. Him and others such as Dr Kununka were always involved in activities aimed at uplifting the Africans.