Uproar As Dogs Exhume COVID-19 Corpse In Namisindwa

Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga has ordered the Ministry of Health to immediately send a team to Namisindwa district after reports emerged that  the rowdy dogs exhumed the body of the first COVID-19 death.

The Speaker’s directive followed a concern raised by Grace Watuwa (Namisindwa Woman MP) who informed Parliament during today’s plenary sitting that the act of exhuming the body has left a terrible stench within the area, an odour that has forced security team deployed to guard the grave to retreat for safe custody.

It should be recalled that on 22nd July 2020, Uganda recorded its first death to COVID-19 with the victim named as a female, whose samples picked from the body tested positive to COVID-19.

“Unfortunately after losing this first case, we expected intervention from the Central Government, the intervention we got was burial and the body was poorly buried, the odor of the decomposing body has sent away security. It was buried but poorly done, I think the dogs opened it up, so the odour is everywhere. We expected the intervention to sensitization of the community,” Watuwa said.

She called on the Ministry of Health to come to the aid of Namisindwa district, saying all contacts to the deceased have been caged in a quarantine center, yet the facility doesn’t have sanitisers, masks, temperature guns as well as food to feed the contacts.

 “This lady was a Village Health Team staff, so she participated in the supply of nets in the neighbouring village. Our quarantine is now full with over 180 people with no food, it has only four temperature guns, we are unable to feed them, care for them and the community is up in arms, they don’t want to receive the family back in the community. They don’t have any psycho-social support from the center,” she added.

Kadaga said the matter was of great concern.

 “First we were told masks were for border districts and Namisindwa is a border district, so who is getting masks. We need to ask the Minster of Health to urgently send a team to Namisindwa to ensure this body is properly buried,” Kadaga said.