Mulago speaks out on Covid deaths, faulty oxygen pipes
What you need to know:
- Unease at the presser. His team listened and watched as he spoke but there was a sense of unease at the beginning of the presser. The ED took more than 30 minutes off the press schedule to peruse through the written statement and the presser was delayed by about an hour.
Mulago National Referral Hospital has responded to what they termed false allegations from a Sunday Monitor publication concerning death of two covid-19 patients as a result of faulty oxygen pipes and insufficient oxygen supply.
The article published on Sunday after several months of investigation lists various other shortcomings in the hospital healthcare delivery and its response to the coronavirus pandemic, including complaints from health workers who lack adequate equipment, are overworked and on low pay.
While addressing journalists at the hospital yesterday, the executive director, Dr Byarugaba Baterana, denied most of the issues raised in the investigative story.
One specific area was about the hospital losing Covid patients due to insufficient medical oxygen.
Part of the investigative story read: “When the ICU staff checked their equipment, they made a startling discovery. The oxygen being delivered to Patient Six had a concentration of just 25 per cent, only marginally higher than the 21 per cent in the atmosphere that humans ordinarily breathe in unassisted. Patients in ICU typically require this to be higher than 90 per cent concentration.”
But Dr Baterana refuted the oxygen supply statistics, saying the hospital has enough capacity to produce enough oxygen for patients within and for other referral facilities.
“The allegation that oxygen supplied to patients dropped from 90 per cent to 20 per cent is not true. We would like to clarify that oxygen is delivered to the user wards through pipes when its purity is ranging between 93 per cent and 100 per cent,” he said.
He added: “The patients, who include a 70-year-old referral from Rubaga Hospital ICU, a 27-year-old case referral from Hoima Regional Referral Hospital and 46-year-old case, all died of severe Covid-19 with multi-organ dysfunction. It is, therefore, not true that the patients died of lack of oxygen.”
Guided tour
After the press conference, the medical and engineering team took journalists to a guided tour of the newly installed four oxygen plants at New Mulago.
They showed how the plants work but journalists also found some old oxygen cylinders being refilled in another room.
However, the concern raised in the investigation was also a need for a specific key element of oxygen that was lacking for it to help patients.
When our journalist asked Dr Baterana to clarify on the lack of or limited machines for specific essential tests to monitor conditions of ICU patients as stated in the investigation on which he based his address to the media, he evaded the question, choosing to answer other questions. On insisting for the same question to be answered, he ignored the journalist.
Whereas he rubbished the investigation, saying it was alarming to the public on the state of Mulago hospital, Dr Baterana could not clarify on some of the glaring shortcomings raised in the story. He instead insisted that the journalist should have talked to him to get a clear picture of the story.
But sources who spoke to Sunday Monitor in the investigation were mainly medical professionals who work under his supervision. They were the front line workers who also felt exposed to the coronavirus infection due to substandard personal protective equipment (PPE) given to them to treat covid patients.
Dr Baterana said PPEs being given to frontline workers saying the PPEs, including the mask he wore while addressing the media, were genuine and are in adequate supply.
