By Patience Kirabo

TrumpetNews – one of the Museveni government’s propagandist media outlets serving the anti-Rwanda smear campaign – yesterday Friday 16, published an article on their website entitled, “Makerere alumni Concerned about their Own Sezibera’s Whereabouts”. This was in reference to the rumor, kicked up to decibel levels by all the anti-Rwanda propaganda, alleging that Rwanda Foreign Minister Richard Sezibera “has been poisoned”.

The article on Trumpetnews prompted an observer in Rwanda to remark, “it is ironic and farcical that these so-called Makerere students, as an elite community concern themselves with issues not anywhere related to developing their own country Uganda, which is crumbling.” Corruption, embezzlement, mismanagement of every public office is the order of the day in Kampala, and these so-called Makerere alumni are concerned about Sezibera!, the observer wondered.

Assuming that the so-called alumni friends of Sezibera actually made the remarks attributed them by Trumpetnews, one would think they would first focus on the crisis situation in the Ugandan health sector, “rather than the alleged health problem of an official of a foreign country”.

Take as an example the Mulago-Kawempe “National Referral Hospital” case of the premature babies admitted in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). A couple of pictures that went viral on the Internet on Wednesday illustrated more than anything else the deplorable condition of Uganda’s so-called health sector. The babies in their fragile state were laid down on plastic chairs and others sharing a single bed in multitudes, instead of on baby nursing beds or trays.

This is a clear case of criminal medical negligence. Health practitioners are exposing fragile newborn babies to diseases, infections, potential theft, and risk of taking a baby who is not yours. Social media commentators were pointing out anomalies that arise from exposures surrounding the birth of a child and its first days after birth, which the Kawempe so called hospital was exposing the babies to.

One would wonder why Uganda Government propagandists are so obsessed with the health of Sezibera. The Ugandan population is angry about how the Museveni regime has recklessly creating classes in the provision of healthcare services. Facts on the ground indicated that in fact the scandalous Kawempe Hospital is a first class facility compared to thousands of others in Uganda.

“There are very many so-called hospitals in Uganda that one can only classify as miserable slums – Jinja, Soroti, Kakira, Kawolo, Tororo, Lyantonde, Gulu…name it!” said a Ugandan we interviewed that’s so angry about the appalling state of his country’s healthcare situation. The wives of the big shots, the insiders of the Museveni regime, just fly out to Europe or Asia to give birth, or when they themselves develop some illness.

According to Uganda official documents, the Ministry of Health has allocated seven billion shillings for travel; two billion for photocopying; and 4 billion for malaria. Yet, malaria kills 300 Ugandans a day, and in the last two months, 1,000,000 Ugandans have been infected with the disease. This is one among the many issues that the Makerere community elites should concern themselves with, angry Ugandans point out.

In other words, ordinary Ugandans say, “the hypocrites should look at the log in their own eye before pointing at the speck in their neighbor’s eye.”