Muhammad Ssegirinya was a modern day Henry Dunant and Florence Nightingale

Briefly:

Rubaga Hospital announced the death of MP Muhammad Ssegirinya on Thursday afternoon.
He has been ill since his arrest by the State and detention following his election as Kawempe North MP in 2021.
He was a philanthropist and community leader.
He died at the age of 37.

By 1862, Henry Dunant had published a book called A Memory of Solferino. In this book, he advocated for the establishment of national relief organizations comprised of trained volunteers who could assist war-wounded soldiers from any side of the conflict.

The following year, Dunant served on a Swiss-based committee that devised a strategy for national relief associations.

The group, which eventually became known as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), adopted the symbol of a Red Cross on a white background, an inverse of the Swiss flag, to identify medical workers on the battlefield. In Ssegirinya, Uganda had its Dunant.

Clara Barton

After the United States Civil War broke out in 1861, Clara Barton, a former teacher working in the United States Patent Office in Washington, D.C., volunteered to deliver food and supplies to Union soldiers on the front lines.

At the end of the war, President Abraham Lincoln granted Barton, known as the “Angel of the Battlefield,” permission to run the Missing Soldiers’ Office, which assisted families and friends in locating missing troops.

Over the course of several years, Barton and her small staff received over 63,000 letters asking for assistance and were able to locate approximately 22,000 men.

Barton, a native of Massachusetts, traveled to Europe in the late 1860s to recover from years of tireless work during the war, and while there, she became acquainted with the Red Cross movement.

When she returned to the United States, she began a years-long campaign to have the country ratify the Geneva Convention of 1864, which it did in 1882, a year after Barton founded the American Red Cross.

Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale, OM, RRC, DStJ (12 May 1820–13 August 1910) was an English social reformer, statistician, and the pioneer of contemporary nursing. Nightingale rose to prominence as a nurse manager and trainer during the Crimean War, where she oversaw care for wounded soldiers.

She improved nursing’s reputation and became a Victorian culture icon, particularly as “The Lady with the Lamp,” who made nighttime rounds of wounded soldiers.

Florence Nightingale was a trailblazing figure in nursing who had a significant impact on medical care policies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Uganda and Ssegirinya

I am confident that if one wanted figures on the number of people injured as a result of police brutality, they would not be included in Uganda’s public health statistics.

Which department of medicine in Uganda can accurately inform the world about how many Ugandans have died as a result of political involvement, as well as deaths caused by military actions against civilians?

We have seen police run vehicles over people in what are known as “intentional direct road traffic accidents.” We have seen the military fire tear gas canisters at civilians and shoot live bullets.

Do we have gunshot wounds informing our medical practice? And do we have these taken care of in medical budgets? The chances one gets shot in Uganda are higher than one getting bitten by a mosquito.

Here is my practical guidance to my colleagues who practice clinical medicine and community health.

If Ssegirinya Muhammed could offer an ambulance and triage system as an individual, I am confident that we can outperform him with our numbers and training.

Ssegirinya was not trained in healthcare, but he demonstrated it by constructing a private hospital for his community. I saw victims of state brutality fainting and bleeding in his hands as he rushed them to the hospital.

Whether we liked it or not, Ssegirinya Muhammad was our modern-day hero. Ssegirinya carried out rescue operations worthy of national and international attention.

The author is a Medical Clinical Officer/Certified Public Manager.