ANNA BORZELLO, Gulu | Wednesday
HUNDREDS of colleagues and friends of Matthew Lukwiya, the doctor who led the fight against Uganda’s outbreak of Ebola, laid him to rest, with some wailing, others weeping, but none of them holding hands or embracing.
Such is the virulence of Ebola that Lukwiya’s pallbearers wore protective masks, gloves, caps and aprons as they carried his coffin through the grounds of Gulu’s Lacor Mission Hospital on Tuesday.
The widely respected medic died as he had lived: treating the sick and needy, in his case a nurse who had contracted the viral haemorrhagic fever while tending patients in this northern Ugandan town.
Among the 156 lives claimed by Ebola since September are those of a dozen nurses, a hospital cleaner and driver, and Lukwiya, who ran Lacor Mission Hospital just outside Gulu.
He was the first doctor to die of Ebola during this outbreak.
Lukwiya’s death has prompted the government to meet nurses’ demands for compensation and better support.
“We are working on getting together a pool of doctors and nurses from regional hospitals who we will train next week and then send to Gulu. We are also giving the families of the affected health workers compensation,” Director General of Health Services, Professor Francis Omaswa said.
Omaswa said that doctors, nurses and support staff were already receiving 20 000, 15 000 and 5 000 Ugandan shillings (between $10, 7.5 and $2.5) per day respectively.
Health workers have been provided with protective clothing since the start of the outbreak, but long hours and stressful work have led some of them to make mistakes.
“People know everything but concentration lapses and you get tired. The answer is shorter working shifts. But the most important thing is to get more staff to come in from elsewhere,” Omaswa said.
Ebola is spread through direct contact with infected bodily fluids. As with in all major epidemics it is those who nurse the sick and attend traditional burials, where corpses are washed in preparation for internment, who are the main victims of the disease.
The death of Lukwiya has caused shock far beyond the hospital compound.
Lacor Hospital was set up in the 1960s by an Italian couple, Dr Piero and Lucille Corti.
It has since provided high level health care in Gulu throughout the region’s most difficult periods.
Lukwiya was himself abducted by rebels for a week at the start of the insurgency by LRA rebels.
He remained in the hospital in 1996, when it was home to thousands of people fleeing the rebellion as well as target of frequent attacks.