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Masaka, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Patients discharged from hospitals around Masaka can now find transport means to their respective homes after a clearance by Herman Ssentongo, the Masaka Resident District Commissioner.
Ssentongo has responded to the outcries of scores of discharged patients that have been stuck at different hospitals over failure to get transport means following the presidential directive that restricted the use of both private and public vehicles as a way of fighting the spread of the coronavirus. .
In his address on Monday, President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni put restrictions on the use of private vehicles and also declared a curfew as a way of locking out coronavirus from spreading among individuals through maintaining social distancing.
However, Ssentongo says the District Emergence Taskforce has found it necessary to give a waiver to patients who have been discharged such that they can get back home and avoid decongesting hospitals.
He explains that while some of patients were trapped in the hospitals before the lockdown, there are some who were brought in as emergence cases who had however failed to find means back home.
According to him, district taskforce is going to directly coordinate with all police stations and posts across the area to facilitate easy movement of these patients after they present their discharge forms.
He however indicates that they also issued express instruction to local enforcement teams to strongly deal with anybody who they find abusing the permission.
Dr. Stuart Musisi, the Masaka District Health Officer says the intervention is timely saying it is going to help relieve the hospitals to taking excess burden of people that are no longer on admission.
He says he has been receiving calls about complaints of people staying around despite being discharged and he could not handedly provide solutions to them. He estimates the number of patients currently stuck in hospitals to be at-least 30 that have stayed since Monday
Apparently, the response taskforce has designated retired Captain John Kaddu, the Masaka Deputy Resident District Commissioner to directly coordinate the movement of patients throughout the period of emergency.
Kaddu has noted that the team has so far received some resources and vehicles from the private individuals and other corporate companies in the area to support the movement of these groups of people.
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