Africa-Press – Uganda. The management of Old Kampala hospital has issued a seven-day ultimatum to Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago to retract accusations he made that the health facility harvested a patient’s kidney.
The hospital management said if Mr Lukwago, who was the lawyer of Mr Muhmood Kabanda, a former patient at the facility, fails to comply, they will sue him.
“We want the Lord Mayor to apologise to the hospital, Muslim community and the public for spreading misleading information alleging that Old Kampala hospital harvested the client’s kidney without his knowledge, which is not true,” Dr Faisal Kazibwe, a senior official at the hospital, told journalists in Kampala yesterday.
“This hospital is a religious-founded facility and we cannot do anything out of what is being agreed upon in the consent form signed by the client or the relatives prior to the operation. If Mr Lukwago doesn’t apologise within the seven days, we shall then resort to legal processes to ensure that he compensate the hospital for all the damages,” he added.
In September, Mr Kabanda accused the hospital of harvesting one of his kidneys without his knowledge after he sought surgical operation at the health facility following a boda boda accident on Lukuli Road in Kampala.
After the operation, he was shocked to discover that he had a fresh cut on the left-hand side of his abdomen and he said he did not receive a satisfactory explanation from the doctors.
It was later confirmed that his left kidney was missing after he did two ultrasound scans; one at Malcolm Hospital and another at Mulago, as well as a CT scan at Mengo Hospital.
However, the report by surgeons and radiologists from Uganda Medical and Dental Practitioners Council (UMDPC) shows that Mr Kabanda was born with only the right kidney which is normally occurs in one in every 750 persons.
“The specialists examined the site and the size of the incision, it was found that the scar in the anterior abdominal wall was far from the anatomical location of the kidney, making it very difficult to harvest the kidney through the site,” the report read in part.
“It was also found that the incision did not go beyond the skin and the underlying soft tissue, making it clear that the internal structures were not tampered with,” the report added.
Dr Kazibwe reiterated that the scar on Kabanda’s abdominal wall was due to a routine procedure to secure fat to fill in the defect occasioned by the fracture on the skull bones.
“It is very fine to extract a piece of fats from the abdominal wall to fill any other affected part of the body, it is usually got from the abdominal wall because abdominal scars cannot cause disfigurement to the patient,” Dr Kazibwe said.
The hospital administrator, Mr Dickson Niwagaba, said there has been a reduction in the number of patients and even those who come are always in fear of their body organs being harvested.
When contacted, Mr Lukwago declined to comment on the matter, saying he was attending the burial of the former Democratic Party president general, Paul Ssemogerere in Nkumba, Wakiso District yesterday.
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