Mbarara Hospital and MUST Celebrate First Year of Urology Unit with Free Surgical Camp

Mbarara University of Science and Technology in conjunction with Mbarara Regional Referral hospital organized a free urology medical camp with the aim of addressing all urological disorders among people in southwestern Uganda.

According to Dr. Marvin Mwesigwa, a urologist at Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital and a lecturer at MUST, the annual urology surgical camp has been sponsored by Health and Development Aid Abroad (HADA) in Austria, MUST, and MRRH. A total of 35 patients have been successfully operated and four residents from MUST and Makerere University have so been trained.

‘’We are celebrating our first anniversary as the Urology unit at MUST/MRRH which was started on March 13th, 2022. During the launch, we successfully operated on 60 patients who had urological disorders, and four residents were trained. Within this camp, 35 patients have been attended to and 4 residents have been trained. We intend to make this an annual event for the purposes of hands-on urology surgical skills delivered to residents,’’ he described

One of the patients who preferred secrecy revealed that he had stayed with a catheter for 6 years and life has not been easy for him but after being operated on, he is now living a happy life.

‘’Six years ago, I got an accident that caused complications in my urethra and since then I have been having a catheter for six years until when I got this chance of free surgical operation. I was worked on very well, and the condition is steadily improving. I thank Dr. Mwesigwa and his team for the care and the services they have given me. Everything has been offered to me at a free cost, and I call upon all people out there with conditions I have been having, to come and be worked on,’’ He showed gratefulness.

Dr. Denis Mucunguzi one of the residents of the urology surgical camp reported that he has attained hands-on skills and thanked HADA, Dr. Mwesigwa for the skills they have been equipped with.

‘’The camp has been a success and we were blessed to have a team of visiting urologists to join us together with Dr. Mwesigwa who is heading the urology division. This has been a three-day camp where we have managed to work on 35 patients, the majority of them having urethral restrictors (blockage of urine passway) and we had some children born with congenital problems. We have been able to facilitate everything for the patients. We intend to increase our scope by doing this annually to see that we serve as many patients we can because this is the only urology unit in western Uganda,’’ He added.

Dr. Mwesigwa said that as the only urologist in southwestern Uganda, he has a lot of work to do to ensure that urological disorders are addressed and that more specialists need to be trained. He implored other stakeholders to come on board to have more camps and training of this kind.

‘’I call upon other urologists from Uganda and abroad to join me to train more specialists. There are many people with urological disorders that come here regularly but we are limited with human resource capacity, and the ward cannot house all the patients. When other stakeholders come on board, all these shall be addressed and many will benefit,’’ He appealed