Increase funding  for medical research 

Atul Gawande, a practicing surgeon in the United States, tells of a bizarre 19th Century operation in which a surgeon was trying to amputate a patient’s leg.

 He succeeded in doing so but in the process, he also mistakenly amputated his assistant’s hand. Both patient and the assistant died instantly and an onlooker also died of shock.
 In the end, the medical procedure produced a 300 per cent fatality! 

Such a scenario is an indicator of how far the fields of medicine and healthcare have come. 
Over the years, we have seen unprecedented levels of fast-paced progress in the medical world that have positively affected every aspect of medicine, including prevention, diagnosis and treatment.  

If you read Dr Sanjay Gupta’s book, Cheating Death, you will deeply appreciate the significance of this subject matter.
 The book echoes chilling and jaw-dropping stories of people that were left for dead but their lives were dramatically saved as a result of medical discoveries and breakthroughs.
 
In one of those stories, Dr Gupta describes a patient who, in 2006, woke up after nearly two decades in a coma. He was 19-years-old when his pick-up truck veered off the side of a steep hill and along with causing severe brain damage, the accident left him completely paralysed.

 However, 19 years later (at age 39, he was awake and was out of the hospital within a few months that followed. 
Needless to say, as a country, Uganda has also recorded some incredible medical breakthroughs in the recent years. 

These range from new traditional (herbal) medicine, manufacture of antiretroviral and anti-malarial drugs, to performing open heart surgeries. 
According to the UNAIDS, the number of Aids-related deaths in Uganda reduced by 58 per cent from 56,000 deaths in 2010 to 23,000 in 2018. 

Despite recording such improvement, Uganda’s healthcare performance is still ranked as one of the poorest. 
The country continues to grapple with major health-related challenges and many patients have incurred unnecessary health risks that are not only life-threatening, but also life-ruining.  

I have a relative who received wrong diagnosis and treatment from different hospitals around Kampala for more than five years for persistent headache problems.
 By the time she saw the right physician, her condition had worsened and had even developed more complications due to the consumption of wrong drugs.  

The healthcare situation has not been helped by the high medical brain drain the country currently faces. 
 The departure of talented medical professionals and the consequent human resource crisis has further crippled any would-be efforts of accelerating medical research and innovation. 

Sometimes, success comes not from high-tech interventions or cutting-edge technology, but from continued exploration and intuition honed by trial and error. 
It is the simple things, not the complicated ones that make the difference. 

After all is said and done, it is a fact that people will always die and none of the anticipated medical changes will ever give us total control over death.
 
But my point is that if there’s increased investment in advanced medical equipment, training and the relevant skills that come with repeated practice, it is possible to extend survival.
 Many people perhaps could be able to cheat death and have a second shot at life.  

Mr Brian Mukalazi is the country director of Every Child Ministries Uganda. [email protected]