By Ahmed Wetaka
A few weeks ago on a Friday I witnessed an accident on my way to Mbale. A speeding taxi tried to overtake the bus I was traveling in at a narrow and slippery bend as we approached Mukono. However, the taxi driver realised that there was an oncoming taxi and trailer. He decided to force himself in front of the bus, lost control and veered off the road. The taxi overturned, killing three people and injuring several others. One of the dead was an expectant mother. It took almost 30 minutes for police to arrive at the accident scene, about 2 kilometers outside Mukono Town.
Strangely, the officers seems to be more interested in the bodies as opposed to the injured accident victims. Immediately, a patrol vehicle arrived the officers, picked up the lifeless body of the expectant mother and placed it under their seats and parked by the roadside, the typical police style. It took the intervention of residents to compel police to place some of the accident victims in their vehicle.
A few minutes later, Honorable Alice Alaso Alice Asianut, the former Serere Woman MP, arrived and offered to transport some of the accident victims to hospital. She even paid some boda boda cyclist to take others to hospital.
Strangely, we didn’t get any help or response from Mukono Hospital, which was only two kilometres away. I have always seen an ambulance that was bought by Hon, Betty Nambooze parked outside the hospital.
What has bothered me until now, is the unborn baby. Isn’t it possible that the baby could be alive even when the mother has just died? Couldn’t medics have saved the baby if the mother had been rushed to hospital?
Why would police pick up accident victims and keep them on their vehicles instead of rushing them to hospital, where possible some lives could be saved? Isn’t it time that we get some paramedics to work with police? What happened to the police ambulances? I don’t see any on the roads? What do they do? Where are they????????