At the Neurosurgery ward of Mulago National Referral Hospital on Saturday lay about ten patients with their heads sealed in bandages, some struggling to seat or sustain a conversation. They are among the eighty who benefitted from a 14 day surgical camp that had specialists save patients with brain tumors and those with deformities of the skull who underwent a surgical procedure technically known as cranioplasty.
24 year old Sematta from Kalamba in Kassanda district is one of them. He tells URN that complications of his tumor started in February with recurrent serious headache and occasional blackouts which had him visit several health facilities including one that kept treating him for severe typhoid. With complications persisting and family savings running out due to constant hospitalisation with no relief, Sematta ended up in the Stroke Unit of Mulago hospital where he was advised he needed surgery urgently. However, this option wasn’t possible until early August when he was added to the list of beneficiaries of the camp.
Dr Joel Kiryabwire, the Head of Neurosurgery Department says it’s people like Sematta who were selected for the surgeries – those who cannot afford the cost of this care and yet staying without surgery was putting them at risk of more complex complications.
He says initially, they had planned to conduct a hundred surgeries in ten days but they only managed to conduct 80 in 14 days as some of them were complex and surgeons had to spend more time on them than earlier anticipated. Apart from the tumors, he lists some of the procedures done to include installing metal plates to protect the brain, correcting abnormalities of the blood vessels in the brain and for some they removed bones to create more space for the brain.
Each week, he says, his department sees 20 to 30 patients needing neurosurgical procedures at the hospital, however they are always constrained as the necessary sundries, medicines are sometimes unavailable and yet other times patients cannot afford even basic tests needed such as CT scans in order to prepare for surgery.
While they were offered free of charge at the hospital, the same surgeries can go for between 40 to 60 million shillings depending on the complexity of the procedure.
Kiryabwire says for this camp, which was meant to clear the big backlog, they made sure the hospital not only avails them the necessary drugs and tests but also offer them additional recovery space and Intensive Care Unit beds to be able to hit their targets.
By Saturday, sixty of the eighty patients had been discharged and Kiryabwire says they hope to have discharged all of them by Monday. The majority of the patients handled in the camp were fairly young with those in their 20s and 30s accounting for the biggest number-URN. Give us feedback on this story through our email: kamwokyatimes@gmail.com
