Suicide attempt student gets six-month jail term

By E. Luganda

MAKERERE HILL, Kampala - A city court convicted a student of Kampala Polytechnic Mengo to six months imprisonment after he was found guilty of attempting to commit suicide.

In addition to the jail sentence, the Law Development Centre (LDC) court ruled that Innocent Muhangi, a 22-year-old resident of Bulange, Mengo in Kampala, should attend compulsory counseling lessons.

Muhangi was convicted after he was arrested trying to jump off the third floor of Mulago Hospital on June 15 this year.

The court heard that he had gone to Mulago Hospital looking for a casual worker at the hospital – only identified as Edison – whom he never saw.

It was heard that the student got frustrated, which led him try and take his own life. But it was not established what the planned meeting between him and Edison was about.

However, upon Muhangi’s arrest, the officer-in-charge of Mulago Police station, Hashim Kasinga said the student attempted suicide because the Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB) had not released his exam results.

“The suspect complained about failure by UNEB to release his exam results yet he had handed in his course work,” he had reported.

“We have counselled him and we have to take him to a psychiatric facility for a medical examination and find out whether the act was spontaneous or premeditated.”

Appearing before Grade One Magistrate Rebecca Nasambu, Muhangi pleaded guilty and asked for forgiveness, saying he had changed his mind about killing himself.

However, State prosecutor Betty Agalo objected to Muhangi’s request, saying he should be jailed so that he can change his attitude.

Hard to control

Despite getting rocked by a spate of gruesome suicide incidents, Mulago Hospital administration has dismissed talk of laxity on its part saying such cases are hard to detect and prevent.

In a span of five days over a week ago, two men – Suleiman Kasajja and Moses Mukwaya of Lungujja – jumped to their deaths from the top floors of the national referral hospital to the consternation of bewildered patients and their caretakers.

This came on the heels of two suicide incidents late last year when two women, Rose Katushabe and Joyce Nambalirwa, breached the metal rails on the hospital's sixth floor and plunged to their deaths.

However, Mulago's Public Relations Officer Enock Kusasira has come out to admit that it would be asking too much from the hospital administration to stop people committing suicide from the hospital's precincts.

When asked whether the hospital administration intended to increase security presence to stem the increasing suicide incidents, Kusasira said it is "practically impossible" to "detect and stop" people who want to commit suicide at Mulago unless the hospital hired guards on  a 24-hour basis to man all the metal rails on all its top floors.

(Additional reporting by Moses Walubiri)