Lubaga Hospital doctor recounts Fr Ssewava’s final days

Hundreds of mourners gathered at Kisubi Seminary for the burial  Rev. Fr Charles Lwanga Ssewava, the Kiwatule Parish Priest who passed away last week.

His sudden death was described as shocking by mourners led by the Kampala Archbishop Paul Ssemogerere.

Addressing the mourners, Dr Julius Luyimbazi, the executive director of Lubaga Hospital, recounted the final days of, revealing that the priest appeared to be recovering and had already been discharged when he died suddenly.

The priest had spent more than a month at Lubaga Hospital.

Ssewava, according to the doctor,  had diabetes and hypertension and was admitted on August 20 with a wound on his foot.

“When he came in, the sickness had spread to his extremities. He had a wound on his foot and his two toes needed to be cut off. We did that,” Luyimbazi said.

“During the surgery, the two toes did not produce a single drop of blood, meaning that blood supply to that entire leg was very minimal,” he said.

Doctors informed Ssewava that the wound would not heal because his leg was receiving little blood. They recommended an amputation.

The priest initially refused.

Lulyimbazi said he sat with Ssewava and explained that without the operation, the condition would spread across the foot and the remaining toes would dry up.

He gave him four days to consider the proposal. Ssewava eventually agreed and underwent the operation.

The surgery went well.

His orthopaedic doctor discharged him on September 15 after the stump healed. The doctor managing his diabetes and hypertension also cleared him on September 18.

Ssewava, however, remained at the hospital as he waited for crutches.

Luyimbazi said the priest showed no obvious signs that his life was in immediate danger.

“He was very jolly and chatty, looking fine. I last saw him on the day before he died. Everybody on that floor knew him,” he said.

That made his death on September 23 particularly difficult for the medical team to comprehend.

“Everyone says they were shocked by his death, but we were most shocked because a discharged patient is not one expected to die,” Luyimbazi said.

The answer came after a postmortem examination at Mulago.

Lulyimbazi said the pathologist found that years of diabetes and hypertension had severely damaged and narrowed blood vessels throughout Ssewava’s body.

The vessels supplying his heart were particularly affected. The pathologist described them as hardened to the point of being “bone hard”.

The examination established that Ssewava suffered a heart attack.

His foot condition and subsequent amputation did not cause his death, Luyimbazi explained. Instead, the problems with his leg had been an outward sign of more extensive disease affecting blood vessels across his body.

Ssewava was a senior priest of the Kampala Archdiocese and was serving at Kiwatule Parish when he died.

He previously held senior positions at Radio Maria Uganda and became known to listeners for his knowledge of Catholic history and his work on programmes such as Saints of the Week.