Hospital porter puts RDC on drip

Ssemakula lying on a bed in Buwambo Health Centre IV where she pretended to be very sick. mukwaya is inset By Joseph Maseruka and Moses Nyanzi A porter at Buwambo Health Centre IV in Wakiso district was arrested as he tried to administer a drip on Betty Ssemakula, the deputy resident district commissioner (RDC) of Kasangati. Oblivious of whom he was cheating and treating, Fred Mukwaya who had for sometime been posing as a doctor at the health centre, thought he had caught the day�s fish. Ssemakula, a newly appointed deputy RDC, wanted to verify claims that most health workers in Wakiso district were not performing their duties properly. She arrived at Buwambo Health Centre on Wednesday at 1:00pm pretending to be very sick. She came with security officers whom she left hiding in a vehicle. �It is true patients are left unattended to for hours. I spent three hours at the health centre without any assistance. When I lied that I was vomiting a lot, I was ordered to lie on the hospital bed for another 30 minutes,� Ssemakula said. �According to Mukwaya, I was in a critical condition that called for special care. I paid him sh15,000 on top of sh5,000 to buy tubes for the drip.� Before fixing the drip, Mukwaya gave her medicine for cough to swallow immediately, yet she had complained of vomiting, Ssemakula said. She later handed over the tablets to the Police as exhibits. The money Ssemakula gave to Mukwaya was later recovered from a nearby drug store owned by one of the health staff. �When Mukwaya tried to put me on drip, I excused myself to go and vomit and alerted my security team who arrested him,� she said. Mukwaya shocked Ssemakula and her team when he confessed that he was recruited at the centre as a porter.