MASAKA — Conditions at the Masaka Referral Hospital in Masaka District, where asymptotic COVID-19 patients are being treated from are “pathetic” and the hospital is “as good as a dungeon, may be even worse”, an angry patient has indicated in a widely circulated and touching video on Sunday morning.
One of the COVID-19 patients who identifies herself as Aliona Mary, a former nurse says the conditions they go through at Masaka Referral Hospital, South of the country are ” mentally distressing and painful”.
Ms. Aliona says the doctors’ unkindness towards them is shocking, and that they just drop the medicine and run away.
“The conditions in this hospital are really horrible. We rarely see doctors, doctors just come in to just drop a medication that has no name for us to use,” she says adding they are put in a section that had been abandoned many years ago.
“I think when COVID-19 came into existence they just created an emergency ward out of this rotten section,” she claims.
“If we are really Covid-19 patients as they have said, why don’t they give us at least Jik to clean our toilets, rooms so that we can be assured of our safety? The hospital itself doesn’t have water,” Aliona adds, noting that all patients have suffered a big deal as sometimes they go days without bathing.
“The toilets aren’t flashed, you can just imagine. We really need help… we sleep next to the mortuary. We get mental distress when we see dead bodies being carried time and gain.”
Most of the covid-19 patients are mostly people from Kyotera and Rakai districts.
She also says, women and children who have no masks are mixed in the same ward— increasing the chances of spreading the virus.
“We [women] are mixed here with children. Weren’t even in our private rooms. We are just mixed up here,” she notes and that “we are just so disappointed and hurt.” “The women here have been crying and everyone has said something you can just imagine.”
“The Minister of Health Jane Ruth Aceng must come hear and see the conditions under which we live. Even babies are here, you can imagine, a baby who can’t wear a mask is with us”.
“The Ministry of Health has been getting donations from people, where does the money go. We eat poorly”.
Both COVID-19 patients and survivors say they have a hard time because of nurses’ negative attitude toward them.
“We feel neglected and that the distress alone will kill us even before COVID-19 kills us,” angry Aliona notes in the video.
She has since asked President Museveni to leave the comfort zone visit the facility and also put to use the donations he has received from the public and other companies.
She alleges that persons placed under facility were living in poor conditions and being deprived of basic necessities like proper sanitation, water and food supplies.
To date, Ministry of Heath says the total confirmed COVID-19 cases are now 859.
