Uganda’s Ministry of Health (MoH) has rejected opposition leader Dr Kizza Besigye’s emergency services declaring them “illegal” and “uncoordinated.
Besigye announced on Twitter yesterday that “From tomorrow, Monday, 30th March, the People’s Govt will provide emergency services (to hospitals) for people in need within Kampala Metropolitan area. Briefing, training & equipping drivers has been successfully concluded. Details on the flier below. Together we shall overcome!”
He attached pictures of persons of the supposedly response team, masked and armed with sanitizers standing beside their vehicles. Since the outbreak of the coronavirus in the country two weeks ago, and a ban on public transport, patients and health workers without personal vehicles have been finding it tough to get to health centres. President Museveni banned the use of taxis, buses and boda bodas and limited to just three people per personal vehicle.
Police spokesperson, Fred Enanga said today at a press briefing at Naguru that the ministry registered a strong objection to Besigye’s emergency efforts calling them ‘uncoordinated.’
“The retired Col Kizza Besigye with his team are just picking onto patients and just dumping them anyhowly and it is something they strongly object to. We as the police, we come out to condemn this, it is an illegality first of all. We don’t have any parallel government and also we want to urge Rtd Col Kizza Besigye to stop using the fight against coronavirus as a tool to politicise things, you know and trying to gain political points out of the pandemic. This is simply a time where we as a country are supposed to jointly come out and join efforts to fight this virus.” said Enanga.
Videos have since emerged on social media showing patients struggling to get health services, especially where they present symptoms and signs of coronavirus.
Efforts to get a comment from the ministry and Besigye were futile as they failed to pick their known telephone numbers but it is not the first time Besigye and his party’s health response have been rejected by government.
In 2018 while faced with an acute blood shortage, the Uganda Blood Transfusion Services (UBTS) rejected a blood donation drive organised by the Forum for Democratic Change. Running with a hashtag, #YouTooCan, FDC asked Ugandans to donate blood following successful drives organised by Kampala Capital City Authority.
In some incidences, the ill-equipped health workers have been captured running away from patients. Ministry of Health spokesperson Emmanuel Ainebyoona even went on TV to warn health workers against abandoning COVID-19 patients.
