A senior doctor has been suspended for his role in the
disappearance of a newly-delivered boy-child at the National Referral
Hospital Mulago in a case dating back seven years ago.
Dr Asinja Kapuru’s suspension enforces long-held
suspicions about how some health workers collude in the rampant though
criminal practice of trafficking in boy-children.
Yesterday, the Uganda Medical and Dental
Practitioners Council also barred him from any form of medical practice
in Uganda for two years for doctoring medical records that aided the
disappearance of the baby.
Currently working as the Medical Officer at
Kagando Hospital in Kasese, Dr Kapuru was the Senior House Officer at
Mulago at the time of the baby’s disappearance.
In their ruling, the Council chairperson, Prof
Joel Okullo, said the doctor was guilty of gross professional misconduct
after he admitted altering medical records to show that the mother, Ms
Sauda Nabakiibi, had delivered a baby girl.
“It is clear that the disappearance of the baby
was a well-planned evil act by a group of medical personnel at Mulago
hospital,” Prof Okullo said.
“It is a manifestation of irresponsibility for a
professional doctor to record information based on hearsay rather than
his actual findings. When a practitioner handles a patient, he or she
assumes full responsibility,” he added, noting that it was disgraceful
for Dr Kapuru to claim that he made a second theatre report because he
was under pressure from a nurse.
Original records show that Ms Nabakiibi was on
July 13, 2006, at about 11am, taken to the theatre where she delivered a
boy by caesarean section. The baby and two others were received,
registered and taken to the ward office by an unidentified nurse.
When the mother recovered from anaesthesia and
asked to see her baby, she was told that she had delivered a boy but
that the child was in the special care unit because he had developed
complications.
However, Ms Nabakiibi told the council, when she
went to the special care unit, the nurses there said they had not
received a baby under the name of Sauda Nabakiibi. Confused, she
returned to the first nurse who had said her child was in the special
care unit only to be told this time that the baby died at birth.
The next day, July 14, 2006, Ms Nabakiibi asked
that the body of her baby be released for burial. The nurse on duty
advised her to pick it from the labour ward. At the labour ward, she was
told that it was in the mortuary. However, at the mortuary, the
administrators said they had not received a body in her names.
Ms Nabakiibi together with her Husband, Mr Farouk
Bukenya, dthen took their search back to the ward where they found a
body of a baby wrapped in sheeting labelled Sauda Nabakiibi. At this
point, they were told to pick it from the mortuary. But the body handed
to them was of a girl. Ms Nabakiibi is reported to have asked the doctor
to explain why she had been told that she delivered a baby boy, her
file showed that her baby was a boy but the body she had been given was
of a girl. The doctor ignored her.
The couple then reported the case to police and later filed a complaint with the medical council.
Prof Okullo said yesterday that a DNA report from
the police and the government analytical laboratory where samples taken
from the disputed baby’s corpse were processed showed that the baby was
not theirs.
During the hearing, Dr Kapuru told the council
that he had, in fact, delivered a baby boy. But he also revealed that he
filled in two reports; one showing that the baby was a girl while
another a boy. He said this was done on the “orders” of the Senior
Nursing Officer at the time, who is said to have insisted that the baby
was a girl.
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