Justice JB Katutsi on battling and reversing diabetes

In 2006, there was a highly contested election. The High Court in Kampala sat to take the final verdict on the matter involving former Forum for Democratic Party (FDC) President, Col (Rtd) Dr Kizza Besigye on allegations of rape. It was a do-or die.

In his judgment, Justice John Bosco Katutsi acquitted Besigye indicating that the investigations into the matter were, “an amateurish concoction.”

This is one of the many high profile cases that Justice Katutsi is remembered for during his career before his retirement in 2011 to settle at his home in Akright Housing Estate on Entebbe Road.

Recently, on appointment we went to meet the retired judge. We arrived at a black gate and hooted. We waited for close to three minutes. A man perhaps in his early 20s peeped from a see-through hole before he opened the gate. He directed the driver to a parking spot on the paved part of the green compound.

A two-storeyed house painted dirty yellow stands on vast plot of land.
Donned in sunglasses, a brown faded jacket and navy blue polo T-shirt, Katutsi stands on his balcony facing our direction and beckons us with a smile, “you are welcome!” We join him minding the social distance rules.

“I am stuck here, otherwise I am used to alternating between here and my country home in Rukungiri. But the lockdown found me here and I have to wait until it is lifted,” Katutsi notes.

His sighs between thoughtful pauses as if to gather more strength for the next sentence. We engage in a banter about current affairs before starting our interview.

Discovering the ailment
Katutsi pulls a digital glucometer, a device used for testing sugar levels in the body, that hangs from his neck. On close examination, the meter reads 5.2.

“This is what it has been reading for a couple of years. My glucose levels used to fluctuate between 11.9 and 13. It has never been that high since I took a herbal concoction,” the 79-year-old asserts, before going into the house to fetch the documents to confirm his history of diabetes.

Katutsi says he had been battling diabetes for more than 13 years and had been on constant medication.
At the peak of his career in the early 1990s, the father of nine recalls that he had bouts of uneasiness with constant sweating and irregular urinating. However, he rubbished the signs because he was too busy with work. And he lived with the condition.

However, when the signs intensified, Katutsi went to his personal doctor for his monthly body checkups. It is then that the results showed diabetes.

“I cannot remember the years when this test happened because I have not checked them in a long time,” he says, he spreads out the medical documents on a glass top table. “These [documents] could give you a vivid picture of what I am talking about,” he explains.

Documents that the retired judge presents indicate that his sugar levels had hit the 11.7 mark and he was diagnosed with diabetes in 2004.

Another report of tests seen by this newspaper from LMK Medical Laboratory and Consultancies Limited taken on June 18, 2013 declared Katutsi diabetic.

“I was immediately introduced to drugs at International Hospital Kampala and routine checkups. I had to get off sugar completely and was advised to take only a quarter of the salt that I was consuming at the time. I was also told to do more physical exercises for me to try to maintain the sugar levels,” he recalls.

Katutsi says doctors told him that his predicament had been caused by his life style, the types of food that he ate and lack of exercises to release extra salts and fats from, his body.

“I was given insulin which I used all the time but as the norm is, there is no cure for the disease so I was supposed to wait until it would finally take me to my grave,” he says.

Battling the disease
The amiable old man says he does not recall any time he was hospitalised for the diabetes save for the continued monthly hospital visits.

“The only time when I got a big attack was when I suffered a stroke and I was taken to Nairobi for treatment. Doctors told me the stroke was associated with high blood pressure and diabetes but I have since been feeling okay save for the memory loss that I suffered,” he narrates.

During the interview, Katutsi misses and forgets timelines of events in his life and he attributes it to the stroke that he says almost ended his life.

The magical solution
Katutsi says three and a half years ago, one of his sons, Peter Katutsi, a lawyer, recommended David Ssenfuka who was one of his clients. Ssenfuka had some herbal concoction that could help the ailment at the time.

“I didn’t believe this could be possible but I decided to give it a try anyway. He gave me the medicine to try and after three weeks, I saw that I had started feeling better. I didn’t go back to hospital for the checkups and insulin but I started feeling better,” he says.

Ssenfuka, who prefers to be referred to as a researcher, says the knowledge of making concoction to heal different diseases was passed on to him by his late grandmother but he has been frustrated with his effort to register it at national level.

“This drug has healed many people, Justice Katutsi is just one of them but I couldn’t come out to tell the world about my discovery before confirming it and passing it through formal registration. For now I work on people and keep the records so as to show evidence for registration when I finally get a chance,” he says.

“His stage and type of diabetes was easy to handle because it was about lifestyle,” says Ssenfuka continuing, “I have found this concoction to work faster on such conditions but it also depends on how someone’s body responds to medicine. Some people even take a shorter time than Justice Katutsi did.”

After his glucose levels normalised, Katutsi says he went back to his doctors and took a test which finally ruled out the disease. He stopped taking the concoction and for the last three and a half years, he has been checking his sugar levels but they remain within the safe range between 3.5 and 5.7.

About the remedy
Some pathologists at Mulago Hospital who have interacted with the patients who used the concoction after they were declared negative prefer to speak anonymously because the drug is not certified.

“It is unfortunate that this concoction is not registered yet it is a local herb. Many of our patients have surprised us when they come for tests and they are negative after spending a couple of years on medication,” one of the pathologists says.

Ssenfuka says last year , a group of five professional researchers in Uganda and the US passed his concoction through an animal test to be able to cure diabetes and cancer.

“One of the registration processes of a medicine is to first test it on animals and humans. Much as it has healed many people, I have not done the human tests because of the cost with which it comes but doctors passed it through an animal test,” he says.

“I for now give this drug to patients free of charge. This comes with a cost of transport to find the medicinal trees from which I get the herb. Sometimes I have to transport and facilitate the patients most of whom are financially constrained. That means I need a partnership with individual but most importantly the Ministry of Health,” he adds.

A report released by Natural Chemotherapeutics Research Institute (NCRI) last year evaluated the antidiabetic properties of the herbal concoction (SD2018) in alloxan - induced diabetic animal model. They concluded the herbal formula contained ingredients that are curative for diabetes.

Findings of the five-team pathologists of the results for the analysis of SD2018 herbal sample indicated that 10 ingredients were found including; “Saponins, tannins, alkaloids, reducing compounds, starch, anthocyanosides, anthracenosides, coumarins, flavonosides and steroid glycosides.
The report further indicates that out of the 10 ingredients, only two were not active ingredients for diabetes.

“In conclusion, the results of the present study indicate that SD2018 exhibits anti-hyperlidemic properties and overall, the present study demonstrated the effect of SD2018 to be curative,” reads the report in part.

Katutsi says, “I wrote a letter to the permanent secretary of the health ministry in 2017 to take this concoction to test it and see if it could be a remedy to many Ugandans but I don’t think they acted on it. I can’t talk for the government but I wish this herb is given attention because I am a living testimony. I knew just like everyone does that diabetes has no cure but I am okay now,” he says with a satisfaction.

A quick search on the internet provides some of the signs symptoms of diabetes at its early stages; increased thirst, frequent urination, extreme hunger, unexplained weight loss, presence of ketones in the urine (ketones are a byproduct of the breakdown of muscle and fat that happens when there is not enough available insulin), fatigue and irritability.

Quick facts
Family:John Bosco Katutsi, 79, has a wife and nine children.
Work: He was a high court judge and retired in 2011.
His best dish: Fresh fish and brown rice
Meals: Less starch, less sugar and salt. Green tea.
Routine: Wake up at 6am, watch news on CNN and eats breakfast at 10am. He exercises for 30 minutes by walking around the compound. He takes lunch at 1pm, then reads newspapers and novels before going to his gym at 5.30pm.
Music: Kadongo Kamu genre especially, by Paul Kafeero
His role model: St Thomas More, a prominent lawyer in medieval Britain.