By Marie Mulvenna

As Tom Dlugos begins his medical studies at Tulane University, he takes with him memories of fantastic experiences in Masaka, Uganda where he recently completed one year at Kitovu Mission Hospital as a biochemist and lab assistant.

A graduate of Pius X and Notre Dame University and a parishioner at St. Jude’s, Tom has already gained valuable medical experience through summer assignments at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta and at St. Joseph’s Hospital in South Bend, Inc. He received his B.S. in biology and chemistry in 1972 from Notre Dame and a month later packed his bags for the trip to Uganda and a one year stint working with the Medical Missionaries of Mary, an Irish order of sisters who have been serving the Uganda populace for 15 years.

Tom describes his overseas experience as “fantastic” and relates that Masaka is considered a “breadbasket area” with most of the people engaged in some form of agriculture. The natives are extremely susceptible to malaria, especially cerebral malaria, tuberculosis and malnutrition, a problem that Tom described as “crucial.”

Most of the patients at the 130-bed hospital are children and beds are scarce. Tom explained that due to a lack of vaccinations, the children are vulnerable to all types of illnesses and the mortality rate is extremely high. About one-third of all live births succumb before age five. “If they live to be five or ten, then they have a good chance,” Tom observed.

Perhaps due to his personal exposure to the illnesses affecting the younger population, Tom hopes to return to a developing nation with his training in surgery and a specialty in pediatrics. Tom added he felt some extra knowledge in obstetrics and gynecology would be very advantageous to his future work which he adds will be in a tropical country which drastically needs health services.

In addition to medical background and experience, Tom garnered a wealth of political experience first-hand and can rattle off the local tribes and factions that run steadily through the Uganda social current. During his stay, President Idi Amin Dada, expelled all Asians, an invasion took place from Tanzania during which the former president attempted to take over the country followed by a retaliation bombing of Tanzania for the invasion attempt. With guerrillas in the background of his dwelling, Tom speaks first-hand of the strife in the nation. During the Amin expulsion, work permits and visitor’s visas were outlawed and a definite Amin drive was launched to make the nation Islamic although the Islamic population is but 10 percent of the total. The effect on hospital supplies was drastic and the lab was cut off from all imports of chemicals and needed equipment. All imports were prohibited and even today foreign nations are reluctant to come in for industry since Uganda has already taken over ten plantations owned by the British as well as the coffee and sugar industries.

During the domestic problems of Uganda, Tom said Catholics had to be extremely careful and anyone with any education was open to a sudden “disappearance.” All clergy have been urged to wear their clerical garb which affords them some security.” However, Tom added, some priests have actually been hunted by the army and they must refrain from any comments, even guarded, against the military rule.

“There is absolutely no freedom of speech,” Tom said, adding that spies in the waiting room were common place and the most casual comment could bring about deportation. He related one incident wherein a woman brought in some newly minted money that bore Amin’s picture. The eyes had been gouged out with a pencil and she was promptly deported. A priest, hunting down food for his students, commented that the lack of food was due to the political intrigue and he too soon vanished from the country. Tom described the present sentiment as anti-Buganda, explaining the Buganda tribe are very enterprising but are not in Amin’s good graces. The Kakwa tribe from which Amin hails is currently the favored one and the ongoing conflicts have resulted in the exodus of many doctors and trained personnel. “So many doctors are leaving that Amin has brought in Arabs, Koreans and Russians to fill the gap. It’s a frightening situation for native and foreign professional people.”

Tom stated that two or three cases of sickle-cell anemia are found daily. “There’s little we can do for them,” he explained. Various types of anemia are very common; tropical ills are rampant and the average life expectancy is under 50.

The severity of malnutrition was one area of great interest to Tom and he described a malnutrition unit run by the hospital in which a child and mother would be kept until they are taught how to cope with food problems and trained how to utilize meat, soya, nuts, fish, milk and other foods. “We train the mother while the child is being treated,” Tom said, adding that if the child were suffering from malnutrition in the bush area, his chances of survival would be 20 percent compared to 80 percent if he were treated in the special unit which can handle only 20 persons at one time.

Local foods are varied and unusual but Tom “tried them all.” He described matooke, a plantain banana stew which tastes like sour potato; fried ants which he contends taste like popcorn; grasshoppers which are “somewhat” similar to fried potatoes, and many other delicacies. People of the Banyankole tribe exist on a milk diet that Tom explained had been a milk and blood diet until the tribe’s conversion to Protestantism.

He went into the bush country weekly with Sister Dr. Augustus Doyle, resident officer of the hospital and a 25-year mission veteran. During his 12 month stay, Tom also took side trips to Mombasa on the coast of Kenya, a trip into West Uganda to see the pygmies, a safari into Tanzania where the Masai tribe lives and a trip into Kenya where the local herdsmen exist on a diet of camel blood.

English is a rather common language for the area that was once an English colony. Luganda is the common tongue of the tribe with whom Tom worked and local tribes had their own special dialect as well as Swahili, which is spoken by many. During his stay, Tom helped train native personnel in numerous lab procedures and tests and physically converted a post-mortem room at the hospital into a lab. “In that process I also learned a lot about carpentry and plumbing,” adds Tom.

He has begged money right and left, he laughs, explaining that lab equipment is sorely needed in Masaka. He is extremely grateful to Atlanta students at St. Pius who helped, as well as those at his alma mater, Notre Dame. Right now he is eagerly raising funds for a portable EKG machine for the hospital. The unit, he explained, is needed desperately and is an indication, according to Tom, that with the continuing westernization of the area “western” types of diseases such as cardiac problems, ulcers, and cancer are becoming more prevalent.

The dining room table at the Gerald Dlugos home is a collector’s dream, laden with memorabilia from a fabulous year in Uganda. Although the souvenirs will not travel with Tom to Tulane, the experiences and memories of a young man’s year in the medical missions will.