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Is saving lives still the primary goal?
Health workers at Masaka Regional Hospital attends to a 34 -year-old truck driver who tested positve for Covid-19 before he was repatriated to Tanzania on April 18,2020. PHOTO/ISSA ALIGA
What you need to know:
- Mr Christopher Otim says: My question is to the doctors in the private hospitals who are charging an arm and a leg to treat Covid-19 patients, albeit without any guarantee of the patient’s survival.
On the June 23, I read an article titled “Covid Treatment: hospitals defend Shs5m per day bill”. The article also mentioned that one patient was even asked to deposit a land title before he could be treated.
In the article, the reporter asked some stakeholders in the private sector why they charged so highly. Their responses were varied, with many trying to justify the exorbitant costs, however one doctor’s response stood out.
He asked the reporter to first check how much ICU beds in the UK and USA cost before he could answer the reporter.
To add salt to the wound, he seemed to justify the exorbitant bills by implying that treating the disease had risks to their own lives as doctors, he said two of his fellow doctors were in the ICU struggling for their lives because “your hospitals lack oxygen and Uganda is a poor country”.
I was astounded and shocked, how could a medical doctor talk like this in face of what many ordinary Ugandans are going through in trying to get medical treatment for Covid-19 .
This response sent my mind racing to the story of the late Dr Mathew Lukwiya who almost single-handedly fought the fight against Ebola in 2000, his story was a simple one; he and a handful of medical workers arguably fought the world’s worst epidemic.
At the time, World Health Organisation reported that the fatality rate was between 20 per cent to 90 per cent, the disease killed four out of five of those who got infected. This is far higher than the current Covid-19 fatality rates. However the gallant Dr Lukwiya and his team of nurses and medical workers bravely fought this epidemic well aware of the risks it involved.
To further make this story humane none of the doctors asked for salary increments or exorbitant sums of money before they could treat the patients, many risked their lives and many lost it in the process of serving the sick.
One quote that stood out for me from the late Dr Lukwiya at the time of the epidemic was when he tried to rally the morale of the health workers who wanted the hospital closed, he is reported to have said, “it is our vocation to save life, it involves risk, but when we serve with love that is when the risk does not matter so much. When we believe our mission is to save lives, we have got to do our work.”
My question to the doctors in the private hospitals who are charging an arm and a leg to treat Covid-19 patients, albeit without any guarantee of the patient’s survival, is “…is saving lives still your primary vocation or now it’s about making money?”
Christopher Otim, [email protected]
