The co-founder and managing director of Uganda Funeral Services (UFS), Regina Mukiibi Mugongo has succumbed to coronavirus disease (Covid-19).
Mugongo, 66, passed away at Entebbe airport on Tuesday afternoon as she was being evacuated to Nairobi, Kenya "for better treatment against Covid-19", a family member is quoted as saying.
She becomes the latest high profile Ugandan to succumb to the virus in recent days following the deaths of Private Sector Foundation Uganda (Psfu) boss Gideon Badagawa and Kampala City Traders Association (Kacita) chairman Everest Kayondo, who died last week at Mulago hospital and Lifeline International hospital in Zana respectively.
The second Covid-19 wave continues to ravage the country, leading to an oxygen shortage crisis in nearly all hospitals and the daily average death of at least 35 people in the last 3-4 weeks although some deaths remain uncaptured as people continue to treat themselves from home due to shortage of hospital beds and hiked medical bills ranging from Shs 2-5 million per day for Covid-19 patients.
Mugongo and her late brother Fred Katamba Mukiibi pioneered commercial funeral services in the country in 1994 with their UFS, drawing scorn from the general population over what many considered a cultural taboo at the time, offering services ranging from the feeding of mourners, offering criers for hire, hearse and transport services, treating bodies to grave construction, post-death counseling, grave digging and construction, coffin sales among others.
Only last week, Mugongo gave media interviews indicating how her company had become overstretched by coronavirus following accusations that they had hiked their funeral services fees so as to reap from the pandemic. She admitted hiking the fees but attributed it to the high demand for their services and the risks involved in handling Covid-19 burials.
Mugongo undertook professional funeral management training at Salisbury College of Funeral Sciences and Embalming in London.
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