Mulago Hospital sends off UPDF medical team after a successful story against COVID-19
Mulago National Referral Hospital has registered a success story in the fight against coronavirus disease in the country. This as the hospital sends off a medical team of Uganda People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) after month-long deployment to their respective duty stations.
The 26 UPDF medical team including doctors and nurses were deployed to work with Mulago Hospital medical team and the Infectious Disease Institute in treating COVID-19 patients who were admitted at Mulago after a break out in the country.
Maj. Gen. Dr Ambrose Musinguzi, the UPDF Chief of Medical Services speaking at the farewell event said that they started training their medical team on how to manage COVID-19 cases soon after a case was confirmed on the African continent.
“Moved in to support Mulago National Referral Hospital, we saw this coming when we had the first case in Egypt, we said now the African continent was affected. So, we requested to be trained, and we trained 86 medical workers, both at Mbuya and Bombo, we also sensitized UPDF leadership using the same theme of WHO and Mulago Hospital,” Musinguzi said.
The UPDF medical team left Mulago National Hospital after discharging 21 patients out of the 23 that were admitted at Mulago National Referral Hospital.
Dr Byarugaba Baterana, the Mulago Hospital Executive Director who was so excited about their success said Mulago Hospital together with the other teams has disabled coronavirus pandemic.
“Let me remove this thing which has been disturbing me for the time being to show this country and everybody looking at me that we’ve together Mulago National Referral Hospital, Ministry of Health, UPDF and other colleagues from Makerere University brought COVID to halt, now we have disabled COVID, COVID is disabled, we had 23 patients, remember we are remaining with 2, who could be discharged today,” Baterana said.
However, Dr Baterana said that Mulago National Referral Hospital still needs the service of the UPDF medical team particularly in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) to help them gain more experience.
“Have said let these not go, let have these people be defined in the rules, we put some of your members in Intensive Care Unit, they gain more experience,” Baterana said.
The State Minister of Health for General Duties, Robinah Nabbanja in the same event said with the efforts so far done, truck drivers remain a major challenge to Uganda’s COVID-19 struggle.
Nabbanja says the Ministry is to conduct a survey, to determine the contacts of these truck drivers which may influence mass testing of people suspected to have been in contact with them, before the testing of truck drivers was rolled out.
“We are going to survey within this week; we are also going to massively test all those people, the contacts of the truck drivers, those we think might have got into contact with the truck drivers before we started testing. In the areas of Naluwerere, those areas where truck drivers have been parking,” Nabbanja said.
Also, Nabbanja who is the Kakumiro Woman legislator donated 10 motorcycles to Kakumiro District, to increase access to medical care particularly pregnant mothers.
The 10 motorcycles amounted to 40m Uganda shillings part of it is the 20m shillings allocated to each legislator.
“For us, in the villages, we can still use a boda boda because some areas are still impassable and they are not easy to reach, so a motorcycle can help a pregnant mother to the health facility and also transfer a pregnant mother from health centre 111 to health centre 1V,” Nabbanja said.
Uganda’s cases are at 79, 47 recoveries, no death and 32 active cases.
