Mulago Hospital is overwhelmed by riders without helmets
By Kalungi James
Wanyana Steven, a lubyanza rider who stays in Bweyogerere, woke up in Mulago National Referral Hospital on a recent Saturday morning after a close brush with death. The last thing he remembered was that he set off from the city center the previous evening to go back home and rest after a long day of work — next thing he knew, he found himself in a hospital bed being surrounded by doctors.
“I thank the doctors who have fought hard to bring back my life at a free charge,” said Wanyana. He says he rarely puts on the helmet while driving a motorcycle and wasn’t sure if he was wearing his helmet the day he got the accident.
The country has lost over 3,500 lives due to road crashes every year for five years running, and over 2,000 of these deaths are from accidents involving bodabodas. Lubyanza visited Mulago National Referral Hospital and found that over 90% of these deaths are attributed to head injuries.
Out of the 25–30 road accident patients that the neurosurgery department at Mulago receives on a daily basis, about 90% are bodaboda riders and bodaboda passengers, and half of them are in a critical condition.
“We give first priority to head injury patients because most of them come when they are unconscious. We are failing to work on other patients because of head injury cases and 99% of these cases are bodabodas” said Doctor Edga Michael Muhumuza, head of the Neurosurgery department at Mulago National Referral Hospital.
Doctor Muhumuza said that accident patients who pass on at Mulago usually die within one day due to serious head injuries. In response to this epidemic, he advised that all bodaboda riders and passengers should always put on a full-face crash helmet whenever they are driving or being carried on motorcycles. Mr. Muhumuza said bodaboda-involved accident cases are often critical emergencies which require the doctors to put on hold working on other patients to first save the lives of accident victims who are unconscious.
The C.T scan — which is used to check the severity of the injury — has to be paid for by patients (200,000 /= — 250,000 /=, $53-$67) and it is critical to test patients as soon as possible after the accident. As a result, when relatives of the victim are not on the scene, the hospital sometimes steps in to pay for the scan to save the patients life.
“I was only directed to buy medicine of 42,000 ($12) /= since I was brought here” said Wanyama.
Despite longstanding rumors that there is a “bodaboda ward” at Mulago, there is no special ward for bodaboda related cases at Mulago national referral hospital — patients are admitted in respect to the kind of injury that one has sustained but all under accident and emergency unit.
A hospital administrator who chose to remain anonymous claimed that the government of Uganda spends around 3.6 million /= ($957) on every accident patient till they are discharged from a government facility. Patients who spoke to us expressed appreciation for this effort since many, especially bodaboda riders, could not afford to meet those charges.
Alex Kivumbi is a builder who owns a motorcycle and rides it privately whenever he’s going for work or moving around the city. He fractured his left leg in an accident the day before he woke up on a Thursday morning to go for work as usual from Nansana to Bulenga. As he was approaching Busega roundabout, he lost control due to over speeding and ended up knocking the road barriers and fell off the bike.
“I tried to wake up to avoid being knocked by other vehicles, but I failed because I felt like my leg was too heavy,” said Alex. “I later realized that it was fragmented after being carried aside by a group of bodaboda riders.” He further told us that if he had not been wearing a crash helmet, it could have been much worse.
It has been shown time and again that helmet wearing reduces head injuries severity in case of road accidents. A study conducted at Mulago by Louis Kamulegeya and others found that not wearing protective gear — such as a helmet — more than doubled the likelihood of getting a head injury. The group at greatest risk of road accidents are youths between the age of eighteen and thirty years and bodaboda riders.
Yet at least 25% of riders in Kampala are not wearing helmets while riding, as the most recent Lubyanza survey from January shows. In addition, 99% of passengers are going without helmets while on the back of a boda, leaving nothing between themselves and a hospital bed — or worse, an early grave. Passengers have said they do not want to put on those helmets because they are unnecessary or unhygienic — yet it’s clear the cost of not wearing a helmet is very high indeed.
