Covid-19 patient who filmed 'appalling' treatment centre under probe, says RDC

An asymptomatic nurse, who on behalf of other patients recorded a video denouncing the horrid state of an isolation ward at Masaka regional referral hospital is under investigation.

Security authorities in Masaka District said they had launched investigations to establish her motive to record a video that went viral on social media, the district Coronavirus task force chairperson, Mr Herman Ssentongo, has said.
Mr Ssentongo who is also the Masaka RDC told journalists on Thursday that Ms Mary Aliona, a former nurse who recorded the video which he says was full of falsehoods is had “a hidden agenda” which they are yet to establish because what features in the video aims at frustrating the efforts of the health workers at the treatment centre.
He said they are yet to find out how Ms Aliona ended up in Kyotera where she was picked from yet it is currently under virus-induced lockdown with no vehicles are allowed to move.

READ:

• Covid-19: Anger as government dismisses Masaka video

  

  Trouble started after ministry officials dismissed details in a video recorded by a asymptomatic nurse, who on behalf of other patients, denounced the horrid state of an isolation ward at Masaka hospital

• Mary Aliona, a detainee at Masaka Hospital, is a heroine, not a villain

  One would have expected the Ministry of Health to gratefully acknowledge her evidence-based report

“We have intelligence information that she was trying to get out of the country to go to Tanzania through Mutukula, so as to proceed with her journey to South Korea but we all know Mutukula and Kyotera are under total lockdown being near the border. We have started to investigate how she got there and whom she travelled with to Mutukula," Mr Ssentongo said.
Dr Mark Jjuko, the in charge of Masaka regional covid-19 treatment centre said one of the children seen in the patients’ ward as depicted in the video belongs to one of the patients, a single mother who had no one else to leave her child with after she was admitted.
“We have handled several patients with children especially those that don’t have relatives to take care of their children at home. We take them (Patients and children) through safety precaution measures and they have all lived well and no one, including those that we have been discharged before has ever tested positive,” he said.

He said the wards are not congested as alleged by the patient because they )health officials) follow directives of the ministry of health and World Health Organization’s standards as far as bed spacing in treatment wards is concerned.
Masaka hospital director, Dr Nathan Onyachi has asked the health workers at the treatment not to be demoralized by the ratings of the patients but stay committed to their job.
“We made a temporally extension of a treatment ward as we are working on where the patients can be treated. We have received a 40-bed capacity tent which is going to be put up to address such complaints. We appreciate the fact that the building where the treatment extension was put but the wards are always clean,” he added.
Masaka hospital covid-19 treatment centre has so far discharged 47 people since the treatment centre was established. It currently has about 30 patients that are undergoing treatment.