How Red Cross team gave it all to bury Ebola victims 

When the Ministry of Health declared an Ebola outbreak in Mubende District on Tuesday, September 20, the Uganda Red Cross Society, a leading humanitarian organisation in Uganda,  deployed response teams in the districts of Mubende and Kassanda.

The team was tasked with providing safe and dignified burials for Ebola victims and holding community sensitisations against the beliefs that the  deaths were witchcraft-related.

Mr Hamza Badru Mulyazaawo, 33, a Red Cross volunteer from the Kampala West branch, was a member of the 22 Red Cross staff deployed in Mubende.

He said their first task involved taming the hostile community.

“At the beginning, the community was so hostile. They couldn’t believe that their loved ones were dying of Ebola. I recall a scenario in Kirwanyi Village, Kiruma Sub-county, where one family had refused us to bury their loved one, but we had to explain why we had camped in the area,” he says. 

The family and community leaders eventually allowed the Red Cross team to conduct the burial.  Mr Mulyazaawo says they are trained scientists who understand how to deal with stigma.

“The community discriminated against us. Whenever you could go to a shop to buy something like soap or toothpaste, you could meet people who ask you if you had ever been infected [by Ebola], but we kept focused on our ambition,” he says.

Mr Mulyazaawo recounts the scary moments associated with burying people who succumbed to the disease. He says dealing with a dead person whom he had never seen or met before was hard. What made it more difficult was having to manage the bodies of those who had died of Ebola.

“At the time of death [of an Ebola victim], blood would come out of the nose, mouth and ears. It is as if the body had been pulled out of a room full of blood. Such bodies scared us a lot, but we had to deal with them,” he narrates.

He says sometimes, he would lack sleep at night due to bad dreams and nightmares. 

“Sometimes when the light was switched off and the place was completely dark, I could see what looked like the bodies of the people we buried,’’ Mr Mulyazaawo  recounts.

In his line of work, there are things one can never forget. For Mulyazaawo, it is the time he first came face-to-face with a dead body of a woman. 

“I was so scared, I had never touched a dead body in my life. I had only seen two dead bodies, the one of my grandmother and that of my grandfather. Since my childhood, I feared dead bodies, but this time round, I had to be courageous .

“The woman had a lot of discharge from her nose, ears, and mouth. I had to clean her thoroughly. For two weeks, I could not eat meat or chicken, and whenever I slept, I dreamt about the lady. I even feared sleeping in the dark,” he recounts.

As a Muslim, when such scary moments came, he performed ablution and  would pray two times before she went to bed bed. 

On average, during the Ebola outbreak, every member of the team had to bury two bodies every day. The situation became worse when President Museveni placed a 12-day lockdown in the districts of Mubende and Kassanda. No one was allowed to bury a relative, whether they had died of Ebola or not.

“We were overwhelmed by dead bodies in the first phase of a lockdown, at times, we could bury at night, which was ethically against our rules, but because of the pressure, we had to do it,” he recalls.

“Our efforts started paying of because some families had been spend two to three days with dead bodies.  The situation started normalising after the Red Cross trained more volunteers to participate in the burials at sub-county level in both two districts,” he adds.

Mr Mulyazaawo says due to the nightmares of handling dead bodies,  the team resolved to fix ways of relaxing their minds after a long days work. They resorted to playing music and frequenting leisure places . This, however, did not end well for some of the members.   

On October 30, 2022, police arrested a number of the Red Cross burial team members for allegedly being in a bar at Homeland Guest House in Mubende. The were accused of violating lockdown rules. The next day, Tuesday, November 1, they were arraigned in court and charged with negligent acts that were likely to cause the spread of Ebola and violation of the presidential directives.

Mr Mulyazaawo says the volunteers were trying to get rid of the nightmares after the day’s work. 

“Lifting those heavy bodies and putting on coveralls would get us dehydrated and you could not sleep. So we decided to go and  roast our goat meat and played some music, it wasn’t loud. Unfortunately police arrested our colleagues,” he claims.

Joining Red Cross

Mr Mulyazaawo, who joined the Red Cross Society in 2019, does not regret doing voluntary work.

“I joined the Red Cross Society in 2019 after getting in an accident in 2018. The team from Red Cross helped me a lot in [treatment and healing]. I got interested in joining their service and I have never looked back,”  he says.

“I will always serve society. For me, being in Mubende means I was serving humanity,” Mr Mulyazaawo adds.

Mr Mulyazaawo also told this publication that the Red Cross team is made up of all religions and tribes. This is done so that they [team] can cope with the customs and beliefs of the people they are dealing with. 

“A Muslim should work on a Muslim and a Christian should work on Christian. Someone from one tribe should be worked on by someone from that particular tribe,’’ he said.

Before joining Red Cross Society, Mulyazaawo had a well-paying job at a company that deals in commercial kitchenware and fabrication of kitchen equipment such as ovens and bakery tools. 

The reserved gentleman is married with two daughters.  “My wife knows the kind of job I do and she is supportive because she knows I love it,’’ he says.

Mr Mulyazaawo, however, says his mother was worried of him being an Ebola frontline worker.  

“My mother always gets scared whenever there is an outbreak and when I was in Mubende, she still kept calling me asking whether I was okay ,” he says.

About Ebola

It is a deadly virus with initial symptoms which can include a sudden fever, intense weakness, muscle pain and a sore throat. Subsequent stages can include vomiting, diarrhoea and - in some cases - both internal and external bleeding, known as haemorrhaging.

The incubation period can last from two days to three weeks. Symptoms of Ebola can sometimes be confused with other illnesses such as malaria and typhoid.