Following media reports which indicated that the recently installed cobalt 60 cancer machine at Mulago had broken down, the Ministry of Health has come up to describe the information as false and misleading.
While addressing the media on Sunday afternoon at the Uganda Media Centre in Kampala, Dr Henry Mwebesa, the Director for Planning in the Ministry of Health said that the Cobalt-60 Radiotherapy machine did not breakdown as reported but it is instead scheduled for routine servicing.
“With guidance from manufacturer, operations of the machine have been scaled down in preparation for its first periodic servicing scheduled for next week. Servicing of the radiotherapy machine at the Uganda Cancer Institute will take place from Friday 8 June to Sunday 10 June, 2018. Normal full capacity operation of Radiotherapy services will resume on Monday 11 June 2018,” Dr Mwebesa explained.
Uganda’s first ever radiotherapy machine acquired in 1995 went out of service in March 2016 causing a lot of crisis in the country with several patients referred to Aghakhan Hospital in Kenya for radiotherapy. A new ultra modern machine cobalt 60 teletherapy for radiotherapy would later be procured by government at 64,830 Euros before installing it two years later in November 2017.
While speaking to SoftPower News, Dr Diana Atwine, the Permanent Secretary Ministry of Health urged public to disregard the said reports, wondering what the motive of people spreading it was.
“The machine is working very well. It is due for routine servicing which is going to be done by the manufacturer since it is still under warranty. However, in preparation for this servicing, the operations have been scaled down a bit to prepare for the process,” Dr Diana Atwine said.
Dr. Atwine added that: “The media reports are false and we don’t know whose interest they serve by misinforming the public. Do they want people to die?”
According to Dr Mwebesa, since the installation of the new radiotherapy machine, numbers of patients attended to, have increased.
“The long stalled radiotherapy services resumed in November 2017 at the Uganda Cancer Institute. Number of patients treated per day increased from 10 patients upon re-establishment of service in November and December 2017 to 150 patients per day by end March 2018,” he said.
The number of treatment sessions also rose from 20 to over 300 per day, approximately 1000 patients have been treated since the restoration of Radiotherapy services at Uganda Cancer Institute and about 15,000 treatment sessions were done by end May 2018.
Mwebesa further revealed that construction of additional modern bunkers with 6 chambers which will house 4 linear accelerator Radiotherapy machines is almost complete and will fast track the next phase of modernization and expansion of Radiotherapy services.