Kabugo’s tragic passing must start a conversation on safety

The manner in which Peter Kabugo, an assistant referee aged just 27, lost his life while on the job at the Muteesa II Stadium in Wankulukuku underscores the urgency Fufa must attach to creating a vibrant medical society.

The local football governing body has been relentless in targeting anyone that claims Kabugo had an underlying condition. 

The grapevine had been rife—and possibly continues to be so—with rumours that Kabugo, who suffered a fatal collapse during SC Villa's 5-0 annihilation of UPDF in the StarTimes Uganda Premier League, forgot an inhaler that reportedly helped him deal with asthma attacks.

Local football officials, including those from the relevant refereeing bodies, insist that their fallen colleague had a clean bill of health during his short-lived career. He was as fit as a fiddle, one claimed.

One could argue that nothing else matters more other than the fact that a life—a young one at that—was lost. The experience was supposed to be unsettling to the point of establishing if indeed all responsible authorities perform their duties fearsomely well.

It would be understating things a bit if we greeted the shroud of secrecy around Kabugo's postmortem report with an indifferent shrug of the shoulders. This has cultivated an aura of total opacity, which makes it hard to establish even the most mundane details of the assistant referee’s tragic death.

Yet, that notwithstanding, the death confirms what we already know. The zealous adherence to the ritual of having an ambulance at the venue of Uganda's football league matches can only do as much.

Your columnist vividly remembers when Uganda Rugby Union's watershed moment with ill-equipped ambulances arrived. It was circa 2011. In Jinja.

The outcome for the player who was evacuated via an ‘empty tin ambulance' was, sadly, tragic. It was inevitable that some tough questions would be asked. As indeed they were.

Eventually, the Uganda Rugby Medical Society (URMS) enforced strict safety regulations. Only type A and B ambulances would be allowed pitch side during matchdays (or gameweeks as they tend to be called in local rugby circles). These were deemed adequate vessels to carry out medical evacuations.

And indeed, a couple of years ago, the life of a Kobs player was saved when he suffered an asthma attack during a Uganda Cup match against Heathens.

The player was resuscitated and tended after competently enough while being medevacked from the rugby ground to the nearest medical facility.

By the time the ambulance pulled into the hospital's parking space, the player's condition was so stable to the point that there was no need for admission.

What, by all measures, occasioned the aforesaid success story was the telling influence of the URMS.

One practicing doctor, who is a member of the Society, told your columnist this past workweek that “simple nebulisation and oxygen in an ambulance usually stabilises patients before travel.”

Type A and B ambulances are known not to be short on such interventions that provide urgent pre-hospital treatment.

This explains why the Society was unbudging with the demands it tabled following the 2011 tragic incident in Jinja.

Little wonder, the URMS is broadly celebrated for introducing a studious approach that, to date, remains indispensable to the trade of sporting medical evacuations.

The First Aid in Rugby (FAIR) courses that World Rugby mandates all national team medics to undergo before getting the all clear to be pitch side borrowed rather heavily from the body of work of URMS's level one and two training.  

A founding URMS member told this column that they tried to impress upon Fufa the idea of starting a medical society. The local football body, however, did not seriously consider the suggestion.

As a result a number of boxes that would prove lifesaving for anyone bound to be at risk pitch side continue not to be ticked. It is the fervent hope of this column that the Kabugo's passing starts a conversation that culminates in local football copying the URMS template. 

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