KARAMOJA SHOWERS, COUNTLESS HARMS, LET’S DRESS UP!

A visiting friend here in Moroto is sick. Badly sick, weak. He was never here before. He is now admitted in hospital, scrawny, and feeling totally forlorn. The doctor established multiple health problems in the boy’s city-bred body. First, he had unending headache which jokingly graduated into malaria.

At the first clinic he visited; yes, it was just malaria (I hope this clinic’s equipment is good, and heavens only should know if the human resource is equally competent) and nothing more. Accordingly, ‘coheartem’- (God knows I never learnt spellings of drugs) and ordinary pain killer in -Panadol could do.

To my amazement, like a booming business, the pain and heat instead worsened. Were the “corha…” and Panadol expired? It needs a ‘rare’ faithful one from Drugs Authority to confirm. How? Yet, boy, Karamoja is that far off, neglected, ignored and…who has time to stress his back, strain his eyes, waste his money, time on a dusty dirty distant desert business?

Anyway, a smarter hospital doctor diagnosed that Jonathan did not only have malaria, he had typhoid too. Brucellosis was also involved and a strange first-degree flue and dysentery were also in the squared. He equally tested Hepatitis E positive (at primary stage)!

 

Boy, although treatment for Joni’s illness is guaranteed and all is expected to be fine, my friend is so petrified. Scared that Karamoja soil may swallow him. But he will be good again; the medic is quite impressed by his rapid response to drugs, although injections seem to have gnarled his bottom badly.

Joni is definitely not alone, and Karamoja too might not be alone. Weather changes, - experts say equally withers welfare of all living things. Look here; during dry season, don’t harsh wind and drought shade off leaves of plants without consent? Likewise, the harsh realities of weather hits hard on human beings and other animals, domestic and wild. Thus, we need to beware! We ought to take caution. Let’s dress up by taking surveillance information seriously.

 

During rainy seasons, we have seen screaming newspaper headlines on Karamoja roads and floods year in and out. When this is happening, several disease outbreaks also divert attention of our mothers from garden work. Mothers queue at health units with their little ones waiting for treatment. Indeed, it’s partly because of this desperate scenario that ghost clinics have cropped up in the region today.

A fortnight ago, the health Ministry (in a one off health operation) sent a team to Moroto district and boy, most of those clinics where we took our wounds for dressing have been closed on account of lack of authenticity. Most of them according to my source are not licensed and the medics who were bandaging our wounds are not trained! May God make this right!

Worse still, as these countless challenges head home this flood season, habitual opportunists will not wait to do their usual dirty business. Gateway bus will jump the cost of transport for reason that they get stuck on the chubby road and passengers sleep hungry, others used extra coins to reach their destination. Here, God would expect the service provider to reduce cost since the service gets insufficient, but ask Gateway buses for more. Electricity power will now be on just - twice a week as groundless excuses, “rain has struck a pole” stays permanent.

 

Reader, no time and space is enough to describe a rot that will never be addressed. The problems of Karamoja could be solved even in a day, if there was that will. However, since human beings seem responsible for the multiplication of these evils so as to ensure apparent multiplication of profits somewhere, we can only pray and wait like we do for the second coming.