Mbarara Hospital breaks silence on mysterious death of senior medic

Mbarara, (UG): The management of Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital in Mbarara District has expressed grief over the untimely passing of Dr Rukia Abiru, a Senior House Officer (SHO) at the government facility whose mysterious death has left the entire staff in utter shock.

Dr Abiru who has been pursuing a master’s degree in Anesthesiology at Mbarara University of Science and Technology suddenly passed on on Wednesday morning after a very short illness.

Speaking to the media for the first since the Dr Celestine Barigye, the Director of Mbarara Referral Hospital who doubles as the Director of Health Services in the Region disclosed that Dr Abiru’s death was not only a shock to MRRH but also to the entire nation at large.

Dr Barigye reported that the deceased who has been attached to Intensive Care Unit (ICU) where patients in need of critical care services are managed hailed from Lira District and has been a hard-working doctor from whom the facility had higher expectations.

Halson Kagure, the Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital Public Relations Officer explaining the circumstances of Dr Abiru’s death disclosed that at around 11:00 am, one of Dr Rukia’s colleagues at Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital rung her (Abiru) to inquire about something but the caller went unanswered.

“At last, the phone was answered by another person who happened to have been next to her and informed the caller that Dr Lukia was unconscious”, Kagure said

Immediately, the hospital under the stewardship of Dr Barigye dispatched an Emergency Medical Service (EMS) team led by Dr Emma Munyarugyero who rushed to her residence along Bananuka Road, opposite Oxford Inn in Mbarara City.

However, the team couldn’t do much to save their own as she had already breathed her last. She was found lying on her back on her deathbed.

At the Pathology Department where her body was rushed, the mood was sombre, her workmates were watching haplessly as the body of their colleague was rushed into the mortuary.

Halson Kagure said that pathologists will conduct an autopsy to ascertain the actual cause of death, but in the meanwhile the body of the deceased has been handed over to relatives, with burial set for today, Thursday, November 23, at her ancestral home in Lira district.