Residents of Senero village, Kalangala have refused to welcome back one of their own who was discharged after recovering from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
Kalangala district leaders say some community members have refused to accept the return of Charles Lwanga Banya, a civil engineer who owns a palm oil farm in Kalangala.
Banya was admitted to Entebbe General hospital after testing positive to COVID-19 last month. He had just returned from a business trip to Canada shortly before the closure of airports.
After recovering from the disease, and testing negative twice, Banya was discharged from Entebbe hospital on Tuesday and transported to his residence in Senero village, Kalangala. The area has about 200 households with a total population of about 700 people.
However, Kalangala district chairperson Willy Lugoloobi says that about 400 members of the community want him to stay away from the village for another 21 days to ascertain if he has fully recovered from COVID-19. Lugoloobi faults the Health ministry for not preparing the community to receive the recovered patient.
According to Lugoloobi, this would not have happened had the ministry commenced the community reintegration process when Banya was still at the hospital.
"As head of Kalangala COVID-19 Taskforce, I am not happy about the messy reintegration process. But as local leaders, we decided that Banya is taken to his residence safely. It's what we did,"
However, Lugoloobi says he is trying to persuade Banya to leave the village for now. He, however, says it is not good for community members to reject recovered patients because the government has not prepared the community to reintegrate people like Banya.
Kalangala resident district commissioner Daniel Kikoola says that although the reintegration process was not well managed, Banya should stay in the village as health officials engage the community.
"If Banya leaves now, then he is brought back later, we might have the same problem. So let's just monitor him and ensure he observes the 14-day quarantine guidelines,"
Earlier on, Banya was positive that his community would be more receptive due to mass sensitization and also because all his contacts tested negative to the virus.
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