MP Betty Nambooze
Betty Nambooze Bakireke, the MP for Mukono Municipality says that she was not surprised when the hospital in the United States of America wrote to Parliament indicating that she was going to be held longer than had earlier been anticipated.
Speaking to Uganda Radio Network, Nambooze said although she was supposed to stay in the hospital for a maximum of three months, she arrived in America in a very terrible condition after spending a lot of time without getting treatment.
On August 3, the hospital in the United States of America where Nambooze is receiving treatment wrote to the Speaker of Parliament indicating that the MP might stay longer than anticipated.
Bellevue Hospital Medical Centre through Nambooze’s physician Prof. Allen Keller said that the legislator needs to undergo extensive evaluation before she can be allowed to come back to Uganda.
“My particular expertise is in caring for survivors of torture, a category in which she falls. Over the past several years, [her] health has deteriorated as a consequence of injuries she suffered to the spine in 2017 as well as subsequent surgeries she underwent with limited success.” Keller’s one paged letter reads in part.
Keller added that Nambooze now requires extensive and likely prolonged evaluation and treatment with the aim of restoring her health. This includes the possibility of her having to undergo additional procedures. The letter adds that although Nambooze’s condition was extremely poor by the time she was admitted, she has been responding well to treatment.
“However, given the severity of her prior injuries, and her clinical course to date, she requires substantial additional time to undergo and receive necessary evaluation and treatment.
Presently, we neither can nor is it appropriate to speculate on how long this will take. For the foreseeable future, she will continue to receive care under my supervision,” Keller, the founder of the Bellevue Program for Survivors of Torture and an Associate Professor at the New York University School of Medicine writes.
Although Nambooze’s stay in hospital has been extended by yet to be known period, the hospital has not yet asked for more money for her treatment. Nambooze said before she left Kampala in June, she was given 400 million Shillings to cater for her travel expenses, up keep and payment for medical bills.
“The hospital has not given me any new bills. I wait to see whether they will make any request, if that request is made, I will turn to parliament definitely. However, above all, I will turn to God as the provider. So many people have got a lot of money but have not been able to go through what I’m going through. I have been sick for the last five years sometimes going without treatment but God has kept me alive. I’m not getting worried about money right now neither should anybody get worried that Nambooze is there living expensively at the expense of the taxpayer,” Nambooze said.
She added that her only worry now is the upkeep which she says was not enough, especially after the increase in prices for both goods and services worldwide. “Previously where you were given upkeep that would take you through a day easily, this time you find that it’s not enough. I have not made any other request for funds to parliament yet I was given up keep for only 17 days. Definitely, I have already exhausted that money. I think that parliament cannot choose to bury me expensively yet there is an option of treating me. But in the unlikely event that they don’t come to my rescue, I will turn to God the overall provider, to my family and to my friends,” Nambooze said
According to Nambooze, there are people who might think that the taxpayers are spending a lot of money on her. “People are right to get annoyed with us who get treated on the taxpayers’ money but I’m in this situation because of the work I was doing as an MP. I need to be alive for me to participate in the struggle for better funding of our health sector so that we don’t have to be treated outside the country,” Nambooze said.
Nambooze was one of the MPs who were brutally assaulted when members of the Special Forces Command, the force that protects the President together with other security forces raided parliament in 2017 after a standoff that had for two days running stopped the parliament from debating a controversial constitutional amendment to lift the presidential age limit from the constitution.
–URN
