Ebola and Uganda

So much has been written about Ebola in the last few days in Uganda. Feel like collecting some of the articles here.

Why? As Ugandans say- Just. Just because I want to. How original is that!


Yes, I am updating it. As and when I can.

Seems like I will soon have to stop. Reason? The epidemic is under control, and I know that because I have been looking for the articles without getting them. The reading public is more interested in more mundane things. Like politics!

No news is good news, so, a sigh of relief from yours truly.

Thursday, 13th December, 2007 Protect nurses and midwives

Thursday, 13th December, 2007 Makerere to ignore Ebola

Thursday, 13th December, 2007 Church suspends rituals over Ebola

Thursday, 13th December, 2007 Ebola kills two pastors, toll reaches 35

December 13, 2007 Infected doctor pleads for care to Ebola patients

December 13, 2007 Museveni orders probe into Ebola origin

December 13, 2007 What would God do about Ebola? Valiant medics

December 13, 2007 Dear Ebola, give us time to fix our health system

December 13, 2007 First Ebola victims ate monkey - govt

Wednesday, 12th December, 2007 Museveni speaks to Ebola survivor

Wednesday, 12th December, 2007 The next disaster must not catch Uganda napping

Wednesday, 12th December, 2007 Everybody fighting Ebola deserves proper protection

December 12, 2007 KCC sprays travellers from western Uganda

December 12, 2007 When Ebola met Chogm the grass suffered

December 12, 2007 Exactly what does Ebola want in our backyard?

December 11, 2007 7 districts off Ebola list

Tuesday, 11th December, 2007 'No Ebola outside Bundibugyo'

Monday, 10th December, 2007 Muslims warned not to wash the dead over Ebola

Monday, 10th December, 2007 Stop Ebola stigmatisation

December 10, 2007 Ebola toll now at 28

December 10, 2007 Public reactions about Ebola

December 10, 2007 Red Cross in 706m/- Ebola campaign

December 10, 2007 Parliament suspends trip over Ebola

Sunday, 9th December, 2007 Ebola isolation centre closed over violence

Sunday, 9th December, 2007 What an allowance for health workers!

Sunday, 9th December, 2007 Can you contract Ebola from a handshake, pay phone?

December 9, 2007 Was Ebola outbreak covered-up?

December 8, 2007 Nation on Ebola alert

December 8, 2007 Ebola: Country on high alert

December 8, 2007 Ebola has killed more

Friday, 7th December, 2007 Avoid panic reactions

Friday, 7th December, 2007 Cabinet meets over Ebola epidemic

Friday, 7th December, 2007 Ebola is more vicious

December 7, 2007 Union tells doctors to leave Ebola zone

December 7, 2007 Tracing the origin and nature of Ebola

December 7, 2007 How disaster prepared are we? EDITORIAL

December 7, 2007 Have emergency fund for Ebola epidemic. Govt could do better on Ebola

December 7, 2007 Fallen Hero: A tribute to Dr Kule

December 7, 2007 MPs want govt to declare state of emergency over Ebola outbreak

Thursday, 6th December, 2007 350 confined over Ebola outbreak

December 6, 2007 Ebola kills 3 medics

December 6, 2007 Rwanda screens Ugandans for Ebola

December 6, 2007 MPs want public gatherings banned over Ebola

Thursday, 6th December, 2007 Ebola blows out Bundibugyo’s candle

Thursday, 6th December, 2007 Mbarara Bank staff guard against Ebola

December 06, 2007 Govt denies hiding Ebola for CHOGM’s sake

December 5, 2007 Four epidemics hit Uganda

Wednesday, 5th December, 2007 Shame upon health ministry

Wednesday, 5th December, 2007 Tourists not affected by Ebola outbreak

Wednesday, 5th December, 2007 UPC calls for health sensitisation

Wednesday, 5th December, 2007 Doctor dies of Ebola in Mulago Hospital

December 4, 2007 Mulago gets Ebola case

Tuesday, 4th December, 2007 Was it mere coincidence?

Tuesday, 4th December, 2007 Ebola cases go up to 84, 18 confirmed dead

Tuesday, 4th December, 2007 How districts are handling Ebola cases

December 3, 2007 Ebola cases now 58

Monday, 3rd December, 2007 Rastoon

Monday, 3rd December, 2007 Ebola strikes more nurses

Sunday, 2nd December, 2007 Ebola!

Sunday, 2nd December, 2007 Ebola: Red Cross sends team to Bundibugyo

Sunday, 2nd December, 2007 Kigali put on Ebola alert

November 30, 2007 Ebola strikes again

Friday, 30th November, 2007 Ebola: Experts arrive

Friday, 30th November, 2007 Ebola: Mbarara, Fort Portal put on alert

Thursday, 29th November, 2007 Ebola kills 16

November 29, 2007 No details yet on Bundibugyo strange disease

November 14, 2007 Strange viral disease kills 20 in Bundibugyo

Wednesday, 12th September, 2007 No Ebola in Uganda - health official

So much ink spilled on its account. But this time the black is emphasized by the red of blood.

GayUganda

Taste of Courage

Maybe it is appropriate to test, but not to taste courage.
I was going to begin writing that it is a beautiful day in Kampala. Fact is, only I find it beautiful.
But why not? Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Beauty is a perception. What an insight. No absolutes in beauty, but a perception. One man’s (and woman’s) meat is another’s poison.
I woke early, as usual. Went out to listen to the birds sing. The sun promised a beautiful day, on the rising. But there was something to the west which was not usual. A cloud, a mist of smog was hugging the ground. And rolling out over the city.
I could see the sky then. It was wrapped in grey cloud, wool that is an unwashed grey, high above everything. But now I cannot. Because the cloud that was hugging the ground has extended right round the city. I can barely see the green of the hills. I know it is there. I know it is a living entity just beyond the mist, or smog or smoke, or whatever it is.
There is a grey feel to the day, the morning.
And a grey headline in the Monitor newspaper. The Medical Workers Union is telling medical workers to leave Bundibugyo.

THE Uganda Medical Workers Union, an umbrella association of about 20, 000 health workers has asked under-resourced and unprotected medics attending to Ebola patients in the worst hit western district of Bundibugyo to leave immediately.

"All (health) workers who are not provided with protective gear should not work on suspected Ebola cases and (should) leave straight away," the Union chairman Dr Apollo Nyangasi said yesterday.

No, I am not working in Bundibugyo. No, I am not one of the under-resourced and unprotected medics attending to Ebola patients.
Yet I would not endorse the unions call. We are human beings. We all fear. We all are weak sometimes. Glorifying our fear and clothing it in the needs of the day takes away something within us. Our humanity.
Maybe, just maybe. Well, since I am not there, I must be a very biased judge. But I would say, let those who cannot work, not work. And those who can work, let them work. Ultimately, we are still human beings. Fragile entities, capable of intense fear, and courage beyond the call of duty.
The taste of courage. It can be very rough on the palate.



GayUganda

Test of Courage

This is a real test of courage that I have been thinking of. Not in the abstract, but in real life. Would I be able to do what is right? What I believe is right?

There is an outbreak of Ebola in the country.

Ebola. Ugandans have learnt to live with HIV. It is not the killer it once was. Almost everyone knows a friend, or a relative living with HIV. And a close person who has died of the same. A terror whose familiarity has dullened the feel of.

But there is Ebola.

A frightening disease. Rapid onset. Very high fevers, we are told. Then the bleeding from everywhere, and then death. High mortality. In the outbreak in Gulu, it was as high as 90% of all people infected. It is reputed to be lower than that.

And the fact that it is highly contagious.

I have written of the medics working on the frontline. The fm stations were rife yesterday with talk about what has been happening. On Sunday, they were supposed to have fled the affected district. Bundibugyo.

Yesterday, in rapid succession, 3 of them were reported to have died.

They are very poorly equipped, at the frontline. Little protective clothing. Low salaries, low motivation, a high patient burden. And an employer who regularly messes with their pay.

So the medics are apparently demanding high wages to work with the victims of Ebola. And they want to be paid on a daily basis. Danger fees.

The psychology of desperation.

They are risking their lives on a daily basis. Hour to hour, minute to minute. Yes, they some will stay and work, but they want to see the fruits of their work now. Not tomorrow, not at the end of the month. Now.

They want to be sure that at least, if they survive today, and not tomorrow, the government, their employer, will have given them something for their work. They would have at least used it. Not to die, and their families to wait for years before the government remembers how courageous they were. To be glorified as martyrs, when the benefits are long delayed and the person already dust.

Desperation.

The altruism of the medical profession. Is it supposed to be like so?

Do not fault them.

I was wondering whether I would be able to work in this kind of situation. Knowing that I was playing with a gruesome death while at work, risking every moment of my life.

My lover is definite. It would be beyond the call of duty. He is very practical. What is profitable is profitable. What is not profitable is not profitable. Dreams are dreams, and they do not profit. So do ideals. They are not practical, and not profitable.

And I think of one doctor, Mathew Lukwiya. Medical Superitendent of Lacor hospital. The guy had the guts to walk into the ward of death. And to supervise the care when he was also infected, and later died.

Would I have done it?

What is the test of courage? What is the taste of courage? And of foolhardiness?

The risks are so many. The conditions so tough. The rewards are so few.

My thoughts are with the medics in Bundibugyo district as they moan the deaths of their colleagues. Whether they ran away from the job or not, I am a mortal man. I was not at their job. Their demands for immediate compesation. Again, I am a mortal man.

I do not know whether I would have the courage to face death, however high the monetary rewards.

I salute the Health Workers in Bundibugyo district in Uganda.

The Frontiers of Medicine

The year was 2000 when the first? epidemic of Ebola struck Uganda.

Place was Gulu, in the north of the country. War ravaged Gulu. And it had to be in the hospital. Lacor hospital.

Our hospitals. They are public hospitals. Under equipped, under funded, under staffed. The care is supposed to be free. But in the main it is not. And the medical workers- they work at the frontiers of medicine.

And when a disease like Ebola strikes, it is the staff in the hospitals that are most affected. Working at the frontiers, they are struck down like flies.

In that epidemic, a panic hit the north of the country. Understandable. And in the hospital, where the sick were taken, and at first attended without proper precautions, the medics contracted the disease and died.

One stood out in the mind of the country. Dr Matthew Lukwiya. Medical Superintendant of Lacor Hospital. When many others fled, he stood his ground. Nursed his staff. And paid the ultimate price. By the time the epidemic was contained, he was dead. Indeed a brave man, but the price as usual was too high. In leadership, in sheer strain to the services, in the ravages to the place.

Now, the ‘strange disease’ pre-chogm, had turned into a new strain of Ebola. In the middle of the year, it was deep in the rainforests of DR Congo. Uganda was on alert, but it seems to have passed without us being affected.

Late in August, it was new cases. Late November it was a ‘strange disease’, now it is identified a new, less lethal strain of Ebola. Less lethal, because it kills only 20% of the people it infects.

Sunday, the papers were reporting fleeing health workers from the border district of Bundibugyo. Monday, they reported at least one medic had been hospitalised in Mulago. Tuesday afternoon, the fm stations are reporting the deaths of at least 3 health workers. One was the medic who was in Mulago, another one was head of the health centre near the epicentre of the epidemic, and a third a Senior Nurse, with others hospitalised.

Swift, silent, deadly, the disease has struck again. And those at the frontlines of medicine are paying the usual price.

It is sad.

In the 1980s, it was HIV. Slim disease as it was locally named. Today it is the swifter, more deadly Ebola that strikes at the medics themselves. They have to be space suited zombies to treat patients without contracting the disease.

It will be controlled. The major control factor seems to be knowledge that the disease is, and avoiding contact with those that it strikes. It seems to spread most when it is not known that it is around; that the silent killer is loose. Once it is known, it is no longer deadly to those who do not have it. Unlike HIV.

Bundibugyo. I don’t think I have ever been to that district. But of a sudden, I am collecting news about it.

May those who rest, rest in peace. And those at the frontiers, have the courage to continue fighting.

GayUganda

Uganda and the Ebola outbreak.

Did Uganda cover up the Ebola outbreak because of the Chogm meeting? Interesting, and maybe more so because it is the letters to newspapers which are raising the question.

Suspicious that editors are allowing the question to be published. Smell of a scandal. And of course the red rug does not shy away from such juicy tid bits. Not that it will get me to buy it.

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Explain Ebola silence

The Ministy of Health should explain why it took so long to confirm

that the current hemorragic illness in northwestern Uganda is Ebola.

These cases were first presented in August, 4 months ago!

There was a documented outbreak of Ebola in DR Congo in the middle of

this year. So Ebola must have been high on the list of suspects for

this current outbreak. I hope the official announcement of this

outbreak was not politically delayed so as not to disrupt Chogm.

Concerned citizen

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EBOLA Was Kept Secret Because Of CHOGM

Details are emerging which suggest that the deadly Ebola virus that

hit Bundibugyo was identified earlier but was kept secret for fear of

jeopardising the visit of Queen Elizabeth II and the Commonwealth

summit. In the week preceding the summit and the state visit of the

Queen, there were media reports quoting medical authorities talking

about 'a mysterious disease' that...

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Was it mere coincidence?

EDITOR--Is it purely coincidental that Ebola was finally diagnosed

after raging for almost four months within days of the end of the

Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting? I wonder how many Ugandan

lives might have been saved!

Roger Green

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Again it is the medics who are getting sick, though there is some panic in the west.

Guess now that it is known, it will be controlled. But interesting question, was the outbreak covered up?

gug