Doctor Muwanga recounts journey through Covid-19 patients’ recovery

Since then 52 more patients have been confirmed infected with the virus. He narrated to Daily Monitor how the working environment at the hospital changed.

“Everything started as a joke with screening people at Entebbe Airport until the first case was confirmed. This was a gentleman who had travelled from Dubai,” Dr Muwanga said.
“Uganda Virus Research Institute called me and told me; ‘doctor, do you have this patient? I said yes, and they told me he is positive. I started sweating. I was anxious, I had to call my team, tell them it is not business as usual with a confirmed case. It bred anxiety and panic struck among the medical staff,” he said.

Dr Muwanga said the journey has not been easy for him and his team. “No one has had such experience. I have been involved in quite many epidemics but not this one because in one day, one person can infect more than 70 people,” he said.
According to hospital officials, majority of the medics started being absent from duty on diverse excuses. Many said they could not come to work because of the President’s ban on public transport. Only the committed and courageous ones stayed on duty.

This was not the only challenge they faced as a medical team, he said breaking the news to the first patient was a difficult step.

“With the index case, I remember personally consulting the Ministry of Health on who would break the news? So we called in a psychosocial person. She is a young girl,…the girl sweated, she could not even imagine going there to talk and although she has been doing it,” the specialist added.

“When I put a protective gear on her, she started sweating. She was not seeing, she had to remove the protective gear. I told her you have to get used to this thing. She spent 20 minutes in the isolation ward before breaking the news to the first patient,” Dr Muwanga said.

The news yielded shock to the index patient. He was the sole bread earner for his family. It was devastating.
“I am dead,” the patient is quoted to have screamed upon receiving the news.

“This was a young man but I told him, there is hope, you will get better,” Dr Muwanga remarked.

“We are happy he is among the people we discharged. I am sure he is extremely happy,” he said.

“Now that Entebbe had accepted the first case, every other day we were getting more cases. Cases would appear in Naguru, in Mulago and they would be told to go to Entebbe,” Dr Muwanga said.

The doctors, health workers and patients need emotional support and reassurance, according to him.

“We had to counsel our patients. They were psychologically traumatised, especially after the index,” he said.
Dr Muwanga revealed that on the second day after receiving the news of the first positive case, he contemplated resigning from his job.

“The situation was difficult for me to handle. I felt like resigning but I could not because I was at the centre of it. Every time, the ministry would ring. I remember one time, my phone went off, the minister said “your phone getting off is like committing suicide,” he recounted.

RAY OF HOPE
On Saturday, Dr Aceng said athough the country has registered success with recovered patients, this could be the beginning of the Covid-19 battle. She urged health workers to remain strong.
“Encourage each other, we all need counselling so that we can still go on,” Dr Aceng said.

The discharged former Covid-19 patients will be followed up for 14 days, according to Ministry of Health and their communities have been sensitised against stigma. A cumulative 4,856 samples have been tested for Covid-19 in the country and 244 individuals are under institutional quarantine while 588 contacts with the confirmed cases are under follow up.

[email protected]