Rosemary Namubiru’s Crime Was HIV. Nothing Else.
- Category: Health
- Date 25-05-2014
- 1295 views
On 19 May 2014, a magistrate in Kampala delivered a landmark ruling, convicting a nurse, Rosemary Namubiru, of criminal negligence and deliberate attempt to infect a patient with HIV. The case arose from an incident on 7 January 2014 at Victoria Medical Centre when Rosemary pricked her finger in the course of giving an injection to a sick child but went ahead to use the contaminated needle to complete the procedure. The child’s mother, however, noticed the anomaly and raised the matter with the authorities, culminating into medical test which revealed that the nurse had HIV.
Rosemary was henceforth arrested, remanded, denied bail, tried, convicted and sentenced to 3 years in jail. This case is rare in Uganda’s medical history and bears grave implications both on the general HIV and Aids response and on the delivery of health services. Uganda is home to more than 1 million people of all walks of life living with HIV.
The drastic court verdict has created a social and public health dilemma. It requires careful evaluation to appreciate the concerns of the child’s parents on one hand and the response of the activists who advocated leniency for the nurse on another hand.
After the court process, the child’s father still wondered why the nurse had acted the way she did. The court apparently did not get evidence to prove her motive. True, it is a health hazard to use a sharp object on more than one person, whether one has HIV or not.
Yet I believe that the child’s parents would possibly not have gone to court if Rosemary did not have HIV. The media too would not have given prominence to the story and the magistrate would not have punished Rosemary so sternly if she was not HIV positive.
The activists are right to assert, therefore, that the public reaction and the ultimate court indictment were greatly influenced by the nurse’s HIV status. It is easy to regard Rosemary as a victim of rampant stigma. The court ruling might bring grave consequences for the fundamental rights of people living with HIV in this country.
It is indeed unfortunate that the child has experienced indescribable trauma, being subjected to the Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) treatment. This involves taking anti-HIV medications soon after one may have been exposed to HIV in order to reduce the chance of becoming HIV positive. Apart from sexual intercourse with one who has HIV, getting pierced with an object that is contaminated with blood from such a person is risky. Scientists, however, say that the risk of being infected in this way is so low that about 1 in 100 exposures leads to HIV infection. It is not automatic therefore that the child would be infected after the clinic incident.
The nurse seems to have been betrayed by the employer too. The HIV test was not sanctioned by court. The clinic managers acted unprofessionally and made her HIV results public without her consent or court order. Besides, it is hard to imagine what would have happened if the patient was HIV positive and Rosemary negative. The injury she suffered would possibly have been regarded as an occupational accident; and neither the patient nor the clinic would get penalised.
One wonders if the clinic had provided protective gadgets and the nurse deliberately avoided them to harm the patient. Protective gear should minimise risks of injury or malicious drawing of blood from the health worker’s hands to inject patients with.
This incident brings into question the supervision systems at Victoria Medical Centre and other health facilities countrywide. Rosemary seems not to have been supervised and it would have been business as usual if she did not get a vigilant client that day. It might also be an example of the lax health care standards prevalent in Uganda which is dangerous to the thousands of patients and health workers found there. Rosemary Namubiru has been punished for the sins of the entire society.
By Venansio Ahabwe
Source: Peering Eye, Sunday Citizen