Health: Why Ugandans die of COVID-19

Last updated on September 11th, 2021 at 08:31 am

Between July 21, when Uganda recorded the first COVID-19 death and August 27, the country lost 26 people to COVID-19, out of 2,524 confirmed cases.

While COVID-19 kills on its own virility, most of those dying in Uganda could have been saved. Records show that people are dying not because there is lack of treatment infrastructure, but because of the referral system, case identification and sluggishness of the district task force teams.

Patients are identified late, delay long in hospitals on wrong treatment and, when they take tests, results take too long to enable then take advantage of the treatment infrastructure the Government has spent a lot of money putting up.

The doctors and staff within the coronavirus infrastructure in Uganda agree that some of the people who have died of COVID-19 could have been saved.

Late identification

Dr Bernard Bagaya, an immunologist at the department of immunology, Makerere University, says the system has failed to identify victims of community infections fast enough.

“With community transmissions, people stay with the virus until it develops into a disease. They only report to the hospital when the symptoms start worsening. By then, it is too late,” he says.

And even when they go to health facilities, their ailment is not identified as COVID-19. Health workers mistake the disease for pneumonia or asthma, endanger other patients on the ward and subject the patient to expensive wrong treatment

(Newvision)