Partial relief for boy with anal problem
Ronald Mugoya and his mother at International Hospital Kampala recently. PHOTO BY Stephen Wandera.
What you need to know:
10-year-old boy Ronald Mugoya was born without an anal opening.
KAMPALA
A 10-year-old boy born without an anal opening, has successfully undergone corrective surgery for the second time after the first surgery resulted into further complications.
His parents, Hanifa Nabudeya and Francis Mwidi, say their son Ronald Mugoya passed stool through his mouth immediately after birth in 2002 - an unusual occurrence which they did not give immediate attention until after two days.
His mother, in a bid to get answers as to why the child was passing stool through a wrong outlet, took the boy to hospital where they found out their baby had been born without an anal opening and were asked to have him operated.
According to the child’s father, the boy was taken to Mulago hospital where an opening to pass stool was made from the large intestine on the lower part of his stomach.
And for some time, he was able to pass stool through the opening created on his stomach. However, his woes were not about to end as the opening blocked as Mugoya grew up.
In 2004, another surgery was performed to enlarge the opening but it got blocked soon after it was expanded and the surgeons at Mulago hospital, once again operated the boy, this time to create an anal opening through the rectum where under normal circumstances, the anus should be.
A surgeon at Mulago hospital, who declined to be named, told Daily Monitor that the corrective surgery meant to create a permanent opening did not go well and as a result little Mugoya’s system was disorganised and his bladder damaged resulting in failure to control both urine and stool.
According to Doctor Micheal Muhame, the pediatric director at International Hospital Kampala (IHK), where the boy is currently being monitored after another surgery, Mugoya’s bladder was damaged during the corrective surgery which was meant to create an anus.
“The walls of his bladder were damaged further in the process of correcting the surgery which had gone wrong. As a result, the boy could not hold both stool and urine,” the doctor says.
Through public outcry, the boy was picked by the management of IHK but waited for three months until their visiting urologist from Fortis Healthcare, who performed the bladder reconstruction surgery on the 10-year-old boy, was in the country.
Dr Keshavamurthy Mohan, an eminent urologist and transplant surgeon at Fortis Hospital, India, performed a bladder reconstruction surgery on October, 8 where the damaged bladder was reconstructed to control urine flow.
According to the General Manager of IHK, Alex Alexander, Mugoya is responding to treatment after the procedure and he is expected to leave the hospital after 18 days.
However, with the bladder reconstruction done, Mugoya will not be able to control stool since the two surgeries could not be done at once and would require different expert in that field.
This means that his problems are not yet over although he can control his urine flow but the stool will still flow uncontrollably for now.
