The health ministry permanent secretary Dr. Diana Atwiine has said that what the ministry is dealing with is not Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever as reported by several medical workers, but an economic epidemic.
Dr. Atwiine says health workers are making up stories about the epidemic to receive money from the ministry, something they will not allow.
During a secluded conversation with a group of health workers, the PS explained that her ministry was surprised when some people claiming to be health officials dealing with the epidemic showed up asking for Shillings 500 Million to deal with the epidemic.
“I was shocked when one official approached one of our staff that they want 500m to fight epidemic then. I realized that we are dealing with economic epidemic as well” Dr. Atwiine sarcastically said.
She added that all reported cases have been investigated by a team from ministry of health and they turned out negative. She advised health workers to stop creating unnecessary anxiety in public by lying about the presence of this epidemic.
She also asked that when a negative result is got after testing, patients should be let go.
“So when you got negative results of the dead are you still scared? MOH has handled more epidemics before and it is capable of doing more. We need to work with facts. When we investigate always and the disease is confirmed we act. Even in all cases we have acted promptly .Our teams have been on ground to assess and it seems we are having so many scared that is coming from the lay people who need to be allayed the anxiety” she added.
The PS added that ministry teams should be going back tomorrow to follow up the work they have been doing on ground to get more information.
“Now this responsibility has been taken by other people so we need to be given chance for our team to do their work. Everybody has become an authority so the public is totally confused .I would suggest moving forward, any suspected case call and the team will take the sample and bring results. Meanwhile the patient isolated. When results come out negative let the people know. Let no one distort things for economic gain” she warned.
Cases of the fever were reported in the districts of Nakaseke and Luweero. However, the ministry took samples from the suspected patients and they came out negative.
