Politician dies in Labour

JENNIFER Anguko, the councillor representing Uriama and Bileafe sub-counties in Arua district, has passed away. She was admitted at Arua Hospital on Sunday with labour pains and was asked to wait for a doctor to carry out a caesarean operation. 
Ten hours later, Anguko died. A post-mortem report showed that Anguko, 32, who had gone to deliver her fourth child, died due to uterus rupture.
She was the fourth patient to die at the maternity ward on Sunday, according to an eye witness, who is recovering from an operation in which she lost her baby. Doctors said the baby had already died before they carried out the operation, but the mother blamed the late arrival of the doctor for her baby’s death. 
The doctors reportedly prefer to attend to their private clinics instead of treating patients in the hospital’s maternity ward. “If the management and the doctors in this hospital are fed up, let them leave,”
MP Bako Christine Abia said on Monday after listening to the complaints from the mothers. She called on the health ministry to investigate the rampant deaths of pregnant mothers in the hospital. Abia noted that medics tell mothers not to deliver from home to avoid the risk of dying yet the conditions in Arua Hospital, the biggest health facility in the region, are not different.
The hospital medical superintendent, Dr. Bernard Odu, however, denied reports that the medical personnel in the maternity ward are negligent.
He said being a referral hospital and because most health centre IVs are dysfunctional due to shortage of doctors, they receive the most difficult cases Odu refused to comment on Anguko’s death, citing the professional oath of secrecy, but said mothers sometimes die because the hospital blood bank runs out of blood. He said a 13-member medical team was conducting investigations to ascertain the causes of Anguko’s death. Odu said the report would be sent to the permanent secretary of the health ministry who is mandated to disclose its contents.