Author: Onjia Racheal
Jinja: In the world of marketing, cigarettes used to have the most well thought out adverts. Benson and Hedges, smooth all the way was an unmistakable TV advert several years back. In Budhagali at the ramp out to the Falls was a signpost in the 90s that proudly read: Sportsman, Ye Sebbo. Bujjagali Falls! The Benson and Hedges advert has been off the screens for decades. The Bujjagali signpost rusted and scrap hunters eventually saw it better to send it to the smelter. Cigarette advertising was long banned and the campaign to rid the country of cigarette smoking gets intense…
Jinja: In 2017 Tabalo Simon, 45, of Butiiki, Kaitabawala in Jinja was diagnosed with diabetes. A market vendor plying his trade in Jinja Central Market, he has been living with the disease since. After unsuccessfully trying all sorts of treatment as prescribed at Jinja Hospital, he gave in and allowed that fate had condemned him to live off a needle. But then a friend, he says, recommended to him herbal medicine and life looked south. “I was 87kgs before being diagnosed then when I started treatment, I lost weight up to 68kgs. When I changed my diet and started using…
Jinja: Andrew Waiswa, 50, is a resident of Budondo village, Jinja district. For about a year now, he has been battling with a dental disease whose pain no amount of local herbs usage has been able to soothe. “I cannot eat properly because every time I try to put hot or cold food in my mouth, it goes straight to the cavity of the tooth, and this gives me a lot of discomfort. At times I would even stay up all night because the pain had become unbearable,” said Mr Andrew Waiswa. Recently, he says, the pain got so bad…
Jinja: For three years now, 18-year-old Irene Kayinza from Malongo, Mayuge district has been suffering from what is known in Busoga as a Kidaada, an abdominal distension that’s caused by Cancer. Call it a swollen stomach. She is an orphan, lost her father at an early age and her mother is a disabled old village woman who has to take care of herself and Irene. Yet on top of the cancerous stomach problem, Irene got a big wound on her leg and the medical examination confirmed cancer too. When Busoga Today met Irene at the Emergency Ward of Jinja Hospital,…