American Renee Bach sued over baby deaths

Desperate mothers

Still, one cannot ignore the choices Bach faced when she took in the children.

Imagine looking at your three year old malnourished child knowing that you cannot afford the only solution you have been given. Desperate times call for desperate measures, they say. Most mothers found a quick solution was to take their children to Bach. But then, often within days, the baby would die.

A poor uneducated mother with a sick child is a case of desperation that is common in rural areas in Africa generally and in Uganda specifically. These mothers would be going to any lengths to improve their children’s situations the best way they can. But what about Bach; what was her motivation?

Gimbo Zubeda and Rose Kakai are two of the allegedly numerous mothers that lost their children at the hands of this volunteer turned doctor. These were mothers whose children were diagnosed with mainly severe malnutrition.

The two, together with Women’s Pro-bono Initiative (Uganda) are suing Bach.  Primah Kwagala is representing them.

Zubeda says she discovered in 2013 that her three-year old son Twalali Kifabi was suffering from malnutrition. Public health workers advised her on a nutritious diet that could help her son but Zubeda could not afford the diet. When a woman approached her in July of the same year telling her about a feeding program in Jinja, she did not hesitate. Because she was pregnant, she asked her mother to take Kifabi to Bach’s SHC clinic.

Three days later, Zubeda received bad news. Her son was dead. A vehicle from the center then brought little Kifabi’s corpse and the people who delivered this bad news physically gave her Shs50, 000.

“I had questions as to what killed my child. I needed explanations but none was given to me by the women who came with the body,” Zubeda narrates in a sworn affidavit in a case before the High Court in Jinja. Quartz Africa reported that Zubeda received no explanation.

In 2017, Rose Kakai of Buikwe district lost her son Elijah Kabagambe within days too. After discovering that Elijah was suffering from malnutrition, Rose took him to the feeding program she had heard about from a one Fatuma. “Elijah was playing. He was laughing. My worry was he was too small for his age,” she says.  Little Elijah was tended to out of his mother’s sight and taken to Kigandaalo Health Center IV in Mayuge district (still in Eastern Uganda) the following day.

After two days at the hospital, they were discharged without any medical form or any other kind of documentation. Within three days, Elijah got very weak and eventually died.

Kwagala says Bach is being sued for operating a health facility without a license thereby subjecting unsuspecting members of the public to violations of human rights to basic medical care, right to life (as children died), dignity (she took nude pictures of vulnerable kids and posted them on social media) and subjecting people to inhuman and degrading treatment, discrimination on grounds of race and so on.

The evidence

As part of the evidence, Olana says Bach was “enjoying her work” so much that she decided to tell the world about it through a blog called “The Angels of Africa”.

Although the blog has since been closed down, screenshots of some of the entries had been taken and are being used as evidence. One case involving a little girl called Patricia is being used as part of the evidence in the case against her.

In that particular entry, Bach discusses the day little Patricia was brought to her “clinic”. She wrote, “I hooked the baby up to oxygen and got to work. As I took her temperature, started an IV, checked her blood sugar, tested for malaria, and looked at her HB count. I was attempting to diagnose the many problems that could potentially be at hand. After doing a search for blood around Jinja town, we found her type and it was a match! We started the transfusion…”

During an interview with Fox News though, Bach has something different to say; “I have assisted our medical teams in emergency settings and in crisis situations but I have never practiced medicine and I have never adorned or put on any sort of uniform, a white coat. It is a tough allegation.”

In 2015, after various complaints, the District Health Officer of Jinja District shut down Bach’s operation and ordered her not to provide treatment to other children. The lawsuit against her alleges that she disregarded this order and Olana confirms it.

The Facebook page of SHC has since the start of this month been awash with posts under the theme “Claims and Facts; No criminal charges”. These posts attempt to show the difference between the claims and the facts regarding the civil lawsuit.

One such post says;

Claim: Renee Bach has had “charges pressed against her for murdering hundreds of black children”.

Fact: A civil lawsuit was filed against Renee and SHC by two mothers for the following human rights violations

Violation: The right to equality and right to freedom from discrimination on the grounds of race and social status

Fact: Equal treatment and care was given to every family and child no matter gender, race or religion.

The same post says Bach’s signatures appearing on the evidence documents are different.

Bach’s attorney David Gibbs said in a statement that “the civil lawsuit that was filed against Ms. Bach in Uganda by two mothers is entirely without merit and will be vigorously answered in court.”

The mothers who lost children and their lawyer Kwagala say they are ready.

“We hope that the court can grant the mothers audience and ultimately justice,” Kwagala said.The court hearing was adjourned to January 21, 2020.

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