Covid-19 kills 10 paediatricians in one month

The Uganda Paediatric Association (UPA) has warned of a dark future for the child care following the death of 10 child health specialists (paediatricians) due to Covid-19.

The association said the country only has 500 paediatricians against 22.8 million young people. The said population is for young people aged 10-17 years, according to the Uganda National Bureau of Statistics (Ubos). This means there is one paediatrician for 45,600 young people.
The alarm from UPA comes a day after the country lost another paediatrician, Dr Milly Grace Arach, who was working in Gulu Regional Referral Hospital.

Dr Sabrina Kitaka, a paediatrician at Mulago National Referral Hospital, on Monday said Dr Arach passed on while being evacuated from Gulu to Kampala for Intensive Care Unit (ICU). 
Dr Deogratias Munube, the head of UPA, also confirmed the death.

Dr James Elima, the Gulu Regional Referral Hospital director, couldn’t be reached for comments on why the hospital couldn’t treat the doctor given the earlier pronouncement by the Ministry of Health that the hospital has 5 ICU beds.
But the Gulu West MP, Mr Ojara Mapenduzi, said the oxygen plant at the hospital cannot generate enough oxygen. 
Dr Daniel Tumwine, a paediatrician in Kampala, said the patient couldn’t be transferred to St Mary’s Lacor Hospital, which is about 10 kilometres from Gulu, because the facility only has a High Dependency Unit and not ICUs, where critically-ill Covid-19 patients are managed. 
Officials at Lacor Hospital couldn’t be reached for comments by press time.

Dr Munube tasked the government to ensure the safety of health workers.  
“It is a very difficult time for medical workers and Ugandans. The number of ICU beds are limited to one region of the country. [The ICU beds are majorly in central region],” he said.
The UPA chairperson said the government hasn’t equipped the health sector.

“It was anticipated that by now, regional referral hospitals would be having functional ICU beds so that a patient like her [Dr Arach] would not have to be moved from Gulu to Kampala,” he said.
The country has so far lost more than 15 medical doctors to Covid-19 and more than 2,500 cases of Covid-19 infections have been reported among medical workers, according to Dr Richard Idro, the President of Uganda Medical Association.