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Tegulle! Tegulle !Tegulle? “How many times have I call you?” My Dear friend, if it wasn’t that this time you have punched me under the belt, I would have begun with a little humour. A good one is that I genuinely didn’t know that you are an Advocate of the high court of Uganda! I should have been able to tell from the very beginning as an ardent follower of your daily monitor column. But what is life without humour, right? As I read this, I was reminded of my friend Peter who used to say that if he was moving and a Vitz knocked him, he would refuse to die until a Benz came and finished him off. Peter died in a car accident in 2020. No jokes, Peter is dead! Not funny anymore, right? I hope you are not “cold” enough to ask what car knocked him, Peter died, that’s it! It’s bad enough that he died. We see what you are doing Mr. Tegulle. You are cleverly eluding the wrath of talking ill about the dead, as they say since they are not around to defend themselves. I am not writing in defence of the dead if I should point that out, but rather in pointing out the distorted facts in the cynical write-up. At the risk of coming across as one who wants to use the cover of not speaking, I’ll about the dead, to cover the ills in our medical sector, I will still say, let’s leave the dead to rest. We can still have a decent debate about our health facilities without dragging in our dead heroes to attract attention.
The Health Centres that Tegulle is busy criticizing have saved many Ugandans because services are now closer to the people than they used to be. Uganda has moved from having a limited and scattered number of medical centers to 6937 health facilities that include both public and public centers. From the main two Regional Hospitals in the Country, Uganda now has 16 regional hospitals with 62 general hospitals on top of the Health Centers distributed under the different Administrative units. They are being run by patriotic medical personnel who daily put in all the time and expertise to administer the much-needed medical attention to the “battuzze.” Without a doubt, there is still a long way to go until these medical facilities provide world-class medical services like the ones in proverbial Seattle or Toronto. However, in local health facilities all over the country, the lives of Ugandan citizens are being saved daily. It is public knowledge that Jacob Oulanya was airlifted for further treatment on the recommendation of his doctors in Uganda after they had tried to treat him for some time in Ugandan hospitals. This has happened before and it will still happen. Such a recommendation can’t be used to paint a picture where every medical facility in Uganda is portrayed as a death chamber reserved for the poor. Alluding to TegulLe’s wishes in his article, “Dying, let me die; but my dear Lord, not in a Ugandan hospital” published on 27th March 2022 in the Daily Monitor. I want to believe that wishes do sometimes come true. I wouldn’t want to be the one that stands in the way of his wishes coming true. But they shouldn’t come at the expense of mocking our doctors, nurses and all the heroes and heroins who tireless work their lives out to save Ugandan lives in local health facilities. I know the desperation that has plagued the media world and the competition involved. It’s no longer about the news that informs but news that arrives first. Breaking news is a hot cake! A high-profile person dying is big news, if someone else beats you at it, don’t twist it to make it breaking news. Like they say, “Our lives are mere blips on the canvas of eternity.” You mock a life that is celebrated beyond the borders of this land, how far does your legacy stretch should be the question to answer. Let us keep human, Let us be kind, and let us not politicize everything and say things for the sake of our popularity. ‘You shall a rise before the grey-headed and honour the presence of an old man, as the Good Book says in Leviticus 19: 32. Rt. Hon Jacob Oulanyah was a grey-headed in our midst by virtue of his service to this Nation. Honour is due to him. Forgive me for my digression, allow me to end here for I promised, this write-up is not in defence of the dead. |
