COVID-19 Emergency Action Fund

Dr. Kenneth Daniel Bagonza – Emergency Medicine Physician

In a country of 42 million people, there are currently only seven emergency medicine (EM) physicians. Dr. Bagonza - one of the seven - works as a lecturer at Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST) and by proxy at Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital. Dr. Bagonza, who, as part of the masters in Emergency Medicine pioneer class, was among those retained by the university to provide clinical care in the hospital while training the next generation of emergency care professionals. 

“Our biggest challenge is the lack of understanding of what emergency care is and what is required for whatever kind of emergency,” he notes. With over 3,250 Ugandans dead - including doctors - resulting from Covid-19 complications, there is a sudden urgency to increase the number of emergency care specialists in Uganda. It was clear that most specialties are not available 24 hours, yet emergencies happen at any time. “The unpredictability of emergencies requires that there must be someone with the right skills and numbers to attend to those emergences ably,” Dr. Bagonza says. 

During the Covid-19 pandemic, trained emergency care providers were among the frontline teams dealing with life-threatening issues, bridging the gap between those who required acute care and the handover to the general ward. “The ones who had the best chance of survival are the ones who were provided with that opportunity to be kept alive… Some ailments are so acute that if you don’t catch them in time, then you deny these people a chance to life.” he says.

Dr. Bagonza desires to see that emergency medical care is available at all hospitals with a system that can pick the most vulnerable from their homes to the hospital emergency rooms while promptly providing pre-hospital service. “Ours is a very short interaction but potentially life-saving. And when you make these small but critical changes, they contribute to significant improvement…that is satisfying,”

John Bosco Kamugisha is the Programme Coordinator for Global Emergency Care (GEC) in Uganda. Currently, GEC collaborates with Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST) in south-western Uganda to train Emergency Care Practitioners (ECPs) in Uganda. His role involves coordinating trainers and all the activities for the training program as well as providing curriculum oversight for the course. 

JB, as colleagues popularly know him, was first introduced to emergency care when he met the president of GEC back in 2006 - 2007 while working at Nyakibale Hospital in Rukungiru district. “At that time, there was no emergency care in the hospital. It is so unfortunate that people would die because there was no one to offer the specialized care needed for emergencies,” he recollects. 

The fruit of the ECP’s JB has trained over the years was highlighted at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Uganda. Especially in the Masaka region, a hotspot in Uganda. Some ECPs were deployed as frontline workers at the Uganda-Tanzania border to man the Covid-19 testing center, while others were deployed at the Covid-19 unit in Masaka Hospital. “Covid-19 was pretty engaging for us. With the skills acquired in emergency care, I remember working on a family that included a mother, father, and child who had contracted Covid-19. We provided the best kind of care they needed. All the affected members survived, and they are alive, happy, and living productive lives,” JB says.

Looking into the future, JB is very hopeful. He says, “We have seen considerable progress from where we started to where we are now. We want to scale up our training to support everyone involved in emergency care.”

GEC has made significant strides since 2017, starting with diplomas to now having EM accredited at higher levels of training. This is a significant achievement in providing lifesaving care for vulnerable communities in Uganda, but a lot more work still needs to be done.