By URN
The death of Kawempe North MP Muhammad Ssegirinya on Thursday has sparked a discussion on brain death with experts clarifying that this concept might only have been used to offer false hope and to attract unnecessary cost.
In an interview with URN, Dr Erasmus Okello an Intensivist and Lecturer of Anesthesiology and Critical Care at Makerere University explains that damage to the brainstem, a small area in the brain that controls vital function of life, is irreversible and there is no chance that an individual will be brought back to life even as they might have their vital organs such as the heart or kidney function for a very short time.
In a statement, Lubaga Hospital confirmed that the legislator had passed on at 12:10 PM. However, earlier, opposition politician Robert Kyagulanyi, the President of the National Unity Platform (NUP) which Ssegirinya had been subscribing took to his X (formerly Twitter) platform to announce that Segirinya was not entirely dead.
He wrote that medics at Lubaga had informed them that Ssegirinya’s brain was dead and most of his organs had shut down but was not fully dead, a development that sprouted confusion among different sections of the public.
But Okello says there might have been a communication mishap explaining that doctors have specific ways of examining and confirming death by examining their eyes and respiratory function among others.
He adds that because death is an emotional event, culturally there is always denial especially when the brain is dead but one can be seen to be seemingly breathing with the help of machines. For him, this only offers false hope and may lead to unnecessary costs because brain death is irreversible.
The Intensivist further explains that apart from brain death, there is also what they call cardio-circulatory death which may be reversed if there is a quick intervention. This case involves the heart-stopping when the brainstem is still functional.
Even in this case, experts say the brain survives for about four minutes and if something is not done to revive the heart within that time, the patient will not survive.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the World where it’s permissible, the moment one’s brain is declared dead when their other vital organs are still viable, they are quickly transplanted before they die too.
For now, in Uganda where this is not being done, Okello urges health workers to ensure that they communicate better as no amount of treatment, prayer or incantation will restore life once there is brain death.
