The fate of a 13-year -old girl in Gulu can not be determined after she has been diagnosed with a disease that can not be treated anywhere in Uganda.

The country has no drugs for such cases and the only way is to keep carrying out blood transfusion. Ronah Aparo in Primary six at Police Primary School in Gulu Municipality got her final medical report from St Mary's Hospital, Lacor on October 24 indicating that she had acute myeloid leukemia.

Leukemia is a disease that causes the production of too many white cells in the blood. Before being diagnosed, Aparo had been in and out of hospital since July of this year complaining of fever and malaria that forced her out of school.

The review that indicated that she had acute myeloid leukemia was done by a oncology team that recommended need for ARA-C drug which is not available in Uganda and needed palliative care (medicine that reduces pain without removing its cause).

Aparo has started losing some of her senses mainly that of hearing. Her father, Mr Patrick Okot, told Daily Monitor at their home in Gulu Municipality, it all started with fever and signs of malaria. "We took her to a clinic and she was treated for malaria but she never responded to the drugs," said Mr Okot, a former primary school teacher.

He said from that time, doctors at Lacor started investigating and the first results indicated that one of the valves in her heart was not working effectively. "But as she tried to regain blood in her body and the hospital started transfusing," he said

Apora received the tenth unit of blood on October 23 at Lacor Hospital in a period of three months. "We were told that the disease burns out the blood very fast, " he said. "The hospital first referred us to the Cancer Institute at Mulago Hospital but after consulting, we were told that the Uganda government was not providing drugs for such cases," he said.