Patients and health workers have abandoned Kijunjubwa Health Centre 3 in Kijunjubwa Town Council, Masindi District following an unclaimed decomposing body still laying at the health facility.
Mr Justus Bagaya, the Kijunjubwa Central Cell chairman, told Kazi-njema News on Monday that an unidentified male patient was admitted at the facility but later died on Friday.
Mr Bagaya explained that since then, the unclaimed body is still laying in the facility’s injection room producing a stench that has driven patients and health care givers away.
He said that efforts to the relevant higher authorities including the district health officer to have the body taken away have not yielded positively.
“He was brought to the government health facility for treatment but later died. Ever since he died, health workers closed and abandoned the health centre. We don’t have a mortuary and there is an unpleasant smell from the dead body laying in the injection room. The man died on Friday and since then the body still lays there. We don’t know where that man came from,” he explained.
Adding: “When I rang the district officials, they said that they don’t have any ambulance to pick the body. When I contacted the officer in charge of Kijunjubwa police station, he told me that the matter falls in the hands of the health officials adding that the police set in if the matter is of a person found on the road. This means that since the person has died at the health facility, it is the duty of the health officials to work on it.”
Efforts to get a comment from the in charge of the facility, the facility management committee chairperson and the district heath officer on the matter were futile at the time of filing this story.
However, when contacted, Ms Hafsa Karungi, the Masindi district secretary for health said that she was not aware of the matter but promised to follow up.
“Let me work on the matter in the morning [today Tuesday] because I can’t do anything at this late evening time. However, I had not yet received that information.”
