Loss Of Doctor “A Great Blow To Uganda”

Ugandan Doctor John Baptist Mukasa passed away from COVID on June 29

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Ugandan Doctor John Baptist Mukasa passed away from COVID on June 29 and his loss is being felt in a country where he was one of a handful of neurosurgeons.

Kennedy Owuor first fell over in his hotel room in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, before headaches followed. He initially brushed the symptoms off as a minor problem, but soon he started having difficulties speaking and moving.

A trip in August 2020 to northern Uganda, as part of his duties working for the UN’s food agency, had to be interrupted. He was instead driven for 12 hours to UMC Victoria hospital in Kampala.

There, John Baptist Mukasa, one of only 13 neurosurgeons working in Uganda, performed surgery that took three hours and saved his life. Owuor has since fully recovered, but in June, Mukasa died aged 54 of Covid-19, the loss of his expertise a huge blow to a country of 47 million people.

Patients and friends have paid tribute to a man who declined lucrative opportunities overseas to work in Uganda, training a new generation and always, as a colleague put it, going “an extra mile to understand the social factors affecting his patients.”

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