Africa-Press – Uganda. COVID-19 |As the medical fraternity mourns the death of their senior colleagues who succumbed to COVID-19, Mulago Hospital’s executive director Dr Baterana Byarugaba has urged medical officers to stop self-medication without testing for the virus.Dr Charles Kiggundu, a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist and Dr Fred Kigozi, a senior consultant psychiatrist, died of COVID-19 on Tuesday.”Most of the doctors do not go for health check-ups, especially COVID-19 tests. When they fall sick, they first treat themselves or go to their doctor friends and get medication. They report to hospitals where there is specialised treatment when it is too late, which makes it difficult to reverse the condition and save them,” Byarugaba stated without mentioning names.Byarugaba, who was responding to reports that blamed Kiggundu’s death on failure to access services at the intensive care unit in Mulago, said: “We gave him the best that there was. We put him in the high dependency unit, but he came when he was unsalvageable. Even in developed countries, if a patient reports late, chances are high that they will not survive,” he asserted.Byarugaba clarified that Kiggundu was not on duty at the time he collapsed at Kiruddu Hospital, in Kawempe but he went to the facility after his colleagues called him insisting on a medical checkup. “He had been sick for some time. Upon examining him, they found that his oxygen levels had dropped to 30%.That is when they referred him to Mulago. If they had not called him, he would have died at home. But if he had come to hospital earlier, his life would probably have been saved,” noted Byarugaba.He also observed that when health workers get COVID-19, it is not necessarily true that they get it from their work places (hospitals).”It is sad that we lost our colleagues (Kiggundu and Kigozi), but I am not sure whether they got the virus from their workplaces because they were not working directly on COVID-19 patients.”The Uganda Medical Association president, Dr Richard Idro, called for strategies of how to protect senior doctors and those with comorbidities. Comorbidity is the presence of one or more additional conditions often co-occurring with a primary condition. “There is real concern about the coming days following the political campaigns and festive season.Beyond the care for all health workers, we need to urgently discuss and come up with strategies on how to protect our senior doctors and those with comorbidities.” Idro said. Kiggundu and Kigozi are part of the several doctors who have died of the pandemic since the first COVID-19 death was reported in the country in July.Silent hypoxiaAccording to medical friends, Kiggundu, 55, was found to have an oxygen saturation of 30%. Normal oxygen levels are at least 95%, although some people with lung diseases can have normal oxygen levels at around 90%. Below this, a person needs support.Kiggundu did not have any COVID-19 symptoms, but his oxygen levels were found very low at 30%.Experts say coronavirus patients may have low oxygen levels but do not have shortness of breath which is called silent hypoxia.
