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Uganda: Health Minister Beats Up Nurse
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The Monitor (Kampala)
11 May 2008
Posted to the web 12 May 2008
Chris Obore
Kampala
A nurse at Mulago Hospital has accused Health State Minister Emmanuel Otaala of beating her up, an allegation that once again casts the minister in unfavourable light.
Ms Margaret Tageyerawo, a nursing officer at Mulago Hospital Complex, alleges that the minister "...pulled a heap of files on my desk and slapped me on the neck with them. He attempted to slap me with his hand but I ducked and avoided the slap."
Dr Otaala, however, denies the allegations saying "this is something being framed".
But in a 3-page explanation to the executive director of Mulago, Ms Tageyerawo says that while on duty on July 28, 2007, in Ward 3BES (emergency surgical ward), a smartly dressed man walked in and introduced himself as a doctor.
"Immediately he sat on [the] admission table facing me," Ms Tageyerawo writes in her August 6, 2007 letter. "I offered a seat but he declined to take it."
The nurse writes that the doctor asked for a file of a patient whom he claimed was being "tossed and forced out" of the hospital.
"I did not know this particular patient and the M.F 5 was for out patients and therefore unlikely to have records or a file on 3 BES," reads Ms Tageyerawo's letter. "However, the person demanding for this file had earlier introduced himself as a Doctor. I responded immediately."
Ms Tageyerawo says for a while she abandoned attending to a child who needed admission and went to search in the records.
"I discovered that Okumu Edward aged 66 years and recorded as IPNO 1532336 has been admitted on 27/07/2007 strangely, the patient was not clerked apart from the brief notes from casualty, and there was nothing on the file from our ward," reads the letter.
Dr Otaala reportedly demanded to know why the patient was not clerked to which Ms Tageyerawo answered: "I did not know this patient and I did not know how he was admitted on the ward and why he was not clerked."
Dr Otaala got infuriated. "The Doctor became hostile and started threatening me with dismissal without benefits," Ms Tageyerawo writes.
This is the second time in as many years that Dr Otaala, a physician, attracts rather unfavourable media attention through his conduct.
Last year, Health Minister Stephen Mallinga wrote Prime Minister Apolo Nsibambi accusing Dr Otaala of threatening to punch him during a top ministry meeting following a disagreement over cars and foreign travel.
Ms Tageyerawo says in the letter that she "advised him either to bring the patient back to the ward and he would be attended to or wait for the Doctor on duty to explain why the patient had not been clerked."
But Dr Otaala would have none of it. He reportedly shouted at the nurse. The nurse says she stopped attending to Dr Otaala and returned to attend to the child who had pushed a coffee bean into the ear.
"This enraged the Doctor," Ms Tageyerawo writes. The commotion that followed reportedly attracted the attention of several other people in the ward.
Apparently the nurse did not know that the person confronting her was Dr Otaala, a junior minister in charge or primary health care.
She learnt the doctor's identity from colleagues later. "I was informed that the person who assaulted me was a Minister of Health and that he had reported me to your office..."
Dr Richard Byaruhanga, an ear, nose and throat specialist who had earlier attended to patient Okumu, said his condition did not call for admission.
"I treated the patient and sent him home," Dr Byaruhanga told Sunday Monitor.
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But Mr Okumu reportedly insisted on getting admitted "and went to another emergency ward for admission" after he rang the minister.
Asked whether he knew Mr Okumu, Dr Otaala said: "Of course, I know Okumu." He, however, did not explain the type of relationship he has with Mr Okumu. But of the nurse, he said: "If I slapped her, why didn't she go to court?"
Asked why indeed she did not report a case of assault to police, Ms Tageyerawo said she was not adding anything to the letter she wrote the hospital administration.
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