Kamuli hospital chokes on Covid-19 patients

Kamuli Mission Hospital has raised the red flag over an influx of Covid-19 patients and pregnant teenagers seeking to give birth at the facility.

Mr Ronald Watongola, the hospital administrator, told Daily Monitor on Monday that many of the teenagers come to the hospital with advanced complications.

Mr Watongola said despite being a private hospital, which relies on user fees, the facility, because of its religious background, cannot dismiss or detain patients who cannot pay bills.

The facility is Catholic-founded.

“Most of our patients come from the rural, poverty-stricken areas and with advanced complication often referred from other government health units to ‘die’ here but miraculously, after being well-managed, they recover,” Mr Watongola told Daily Monitor on Monday.

Lockdown impact

He added that because of the lockdown and its associated travel restrictions, patients wait until it is inevitable to get to the hospital.

He said this scenario is complicated by the fact that since the boda boda rider who has transported the patient is only authorised to travel for one day, he is force to go back home, thereby ‘abandoning’ the patient at the hospital.

“Under such circumstances, the hospital gets stuck and drained,” he said.

Mr Watongola also raised concern over the high number of teenage pregnancies and deliveries, disclosing that from March last year to-date, the hospital has registered at least 798 teenage pregnancy cases, with nine of them being below 12 years.

“During that period, we had 216 deliveries, with the youngest mother being nine years,” he said.

Dr Geoffrey Seere, the hospital medical superintendent, said Covid-19 has taken a huge toll on girls due to the lockdown and closure of schools, which has consequently put them at risk of gender-based violence, rampant teenage pregnancies and underage marriages.

“We have realised that increased cases of teenage pregnancies remain a huge human rights violation. Because of fear and shock of reality, these young mothers take wrong advice, follow wrong health paths in trying to hide the reality,” Mr Seere said.

“As a result, they end up going to people who are not qualified, end up with fistula, cesarean deliveries and producing stunted children due to poor feeding and stress,” he added.

Ms Cissy Nabaterega, the officer-in-charge of the hospital’s neonatal incubation care unit (pre-mature babies), said because these girls are not ready to be mothers , they live in denial and opt for risky abortions at the hands of quack and unqualified health personnel.

The Kamuli Municipality mayor, Mr Aziz Luwano, commended the hospital for taking care of patients and being “very understanding, humane and religious” in handling patients’ treatment fees.

“This is basically our hospital in the municipality, which has served us long before we got a government one,” he said.