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9-year-old commits suicide after grandmother asks her to wash the dishes

Police in Matugga are investigating the circumstances under which a nine-year-old girl allegedly committed suicide after being told to wash certain articles for household use by her grandmother.

Kampala Metropolitan Deputy Police spokesperson Luke Owoyesigyire said the incident occurred at Kiryagonja, Matugga, Wakiso district.

Kampala Metropolitan Deputy Police spokesperson Luke Owoyesigyire said the incident occurred at Kiryagonja, Matugga, Wakiso district, when Esther Zalwango, 9, was found dead in the toilet. Her lifeless body was discovered hanging from a rope.

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It is alleged that one Nakiwala Hadijah the grandmother to the deceased told her to wash utensils. The deceased picked all the utensils and placed them on the verandah plus the water. The grandmother went to buy diapers but only to come back with no trace of Esther. As she went to the toilet, she found her hanging inside,” Owoyesigyire revealed.

Owoyesigyire added that the dead infant’s body has already been taken to the Mulago city mortuary for a postmortem as investigations into the cause of her death assemble forensic details into a complete picture of what happened.

Currently, the cause of the alleged suicide is not known as there are a lot of allegations against the grandmother which the police are looking into,” Owoyesigyire said.

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Shockingly, this case of suicide involving a minor taking his/her life is the third one in a space of two weeks.

On January, 10, 18-year-old Emmanuel Okello, a senior four student of Makerere College School committed suicide by hanging himself at his parent’s home in Parliament village-Kitukutwe, Kiwologoma, Kira municipality, Wakiso district.

This happened when Okello’s siblings had been taken back to school, he thereupon locked his father Moses Opio inside the house and committed suicide in the compound.

On January 13, a 6-year-old girl was found lifeless, hanging inside a rented room with the door locked from the inside.

The deceased was identified as Moreen Nantume, a resident of Bweyogerere Central Zone in Kiira municipality, Wakiso district.

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It is alleged that Nantume was seen by her brother, a 13-year-old, hanging on a cloth tied to the middle bed of a trilevel bed.

The deceased was on the verge of returning to the village in Buikwe District to a school she did not want to attend.

Professor Eugene Kiyanda, a suicidologist working with Medical Research Council at Makerere University, says suicide or the urge to be suicidal embraces a whole sweep of different emotions, ideas.

"At one extreme, people just have ideas, for example, one my say living in this world is painful, I just need to get out. Later the ideas become stronger and even develop a plan on how to achieve suicide by either using a rope, tablets or a gun," Kiyanda explains.

Data from World Health Organization (WHO) indicates that close to 800,000 deaths resulting from suicide are recorded globally.

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It is also worth noting that suicide is rated as the second leading cause of death globally among young people aged between 15 and 29, with 79% of these young people coming from low and middle-income countries including Uganda.

Uganda takes the 68th position in terms of suicide prevalence at 9.9%, according to the WHO estimates 2018.

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